title: Capri

text: Some of the main features of the island include the (the little harbour), the Belvedere of Tragara (a high panoramic promenade lined with villas), the limestone crags called sea stacks that project above the sea (the ), the town of Anacapri, the Blue Grotto (), the ruins of the Imperial Roman villas, and the vistas of various towns surrounding the Island of Capri including Positano, Amalfi, Ravello, Sorrento, Nerano, and Naples.


title: Capri

text: Capri is part of the region of Campania, Metropolitan City of Naples. The town of Capri is a and the island's main population centre. The island has two harbours, and (the main port of the island). The separate of Anacapri is located high on the hills to the west.


title: Capri

text: The etymology of the name Capri is unclear; it might be traced back to the Ancient Greek meaning 'wild boar', as the Greeks, who were the first recorded colonists to populate the island, called it (). It could also derive from Latin ('goats'). Fossils of wild boars have been discovered, lending credence to the etymology; on the other hand, the Romans called Capri "goat island".


title: Capri

text: Finally, there is also the possibility that the name derives from an Etruscan word for 'rocky', though any historical Etruscan rule of the island is disputed. Capri consists of limestone and sandstone rock; cliffs form much of the sides and surface of the island.


title: Capri

text: The voters of the island elect representatives for the two municipalities () on the island. The chosen representatives then choose two mayors to govern with them.


title: Capri

text: The island has been inhabited since early times. Evidence of human settlement was discovered during the Roman era; according to Suetonius, when the foundations for the villa of Augustus were being excavated, giant bones and 'weapons of stone' were discovered. The emperor ordered these to be displayed in the garden of his main residence, the Sea Palace.


title: Capri

text: Modern excavations have shown that human presence on the island can be dated to the Neolithic and the Bronze Age. Augustus developed Capri; he built temples, villas, aqueducts, and planted gardens so he could enjoy his private paradise.


title: Capri

text: In his "Aeneid", Virgil states that the island had been populated by the Greek people of Teleboi, coming from the Ionian Islands. Strabo says that "in ancient times in Capri there were two towns, later reduced to one." Tacitus records that there were twelve Imperial villas in Capri. Ruins of one at Tragara could still be seen in the 19th century.


title: Capri

text: Augustus' successor Tiberius built a series of villas at Capri, the most famous of which is the Villa Jovis, one of the best-preserved Roman villas in Italy. In 27 AD, Tiberius permanently moved to Capri, running the Empire from there until his death in 37 AD.


title: Capri

text: In 182 AD, Emperor Commodus banished his sister Lucilla to Capri. She was executed shortly afterwards.


title: Capri

text: After the end of the Western Roman Empire, Capri returned to the status of a dominion of Naples, and suffered various attacks and ravages by pirates. In 866 Emperor Louis II gave the island to Amalfi. In 987 Pope John XV consecrated the first bishop of Capri, when Capri, Scala, Minori, and Lettere were made dioceses to serve as suffragans of Amalfi, which thereby became a metropolitan see. Capri continued to be a residential diocese until 1818, when the island became part of the archdiocese of Sorrento. No longer a residential bishopric, Capri, Capreae in Latin, is today listed by the Catholic Church as a titular see.


title: Capri

text: In 1496, Frederick IV of Naples established legal and administrative parity between the settlements of Capri and Anacapri. The pirate raids reached their peak during the reign of Charles V: the famous Turkish admirals Barbarossa Hayreddin Pasha and Turgut Reis captured the island for the Ottoman Empire, in 1535 and 1553, respectively.


title: Capri

text: The first recorded tourist to visit the island was French antiques dealer Jean-Jacques Bouchard in the 17th century. His diary, found in 1850, is an important information source about Capri.


title: Capri

text: French troops under Napoleon occupied Capri in January 1806. The British ousted the French in the following May, after which Capri was turned into a powerful naval base (a "Second Gibraltar"), but the building program caused heavy damage to the archaeological sites. The French reconquered Capri in 1808, and remained there until the end of the Napoleonic era (1815), when Capri was returned to the Bourbon ruling house of Naples.


title: Capri

text: The natural scientist Ignazio Cerio catalogued Capri's flora and fauna during the 19th century. His work was continued by his son, author and engineer Edwin Cerio, who wrote several books on life in Capri in the 20th century.


title: Capri

text: Prior to the First World War the island was extremely popular with wealthy gay men. John Ellingham Brooks and Somerset Maugham shared a villa there. Friedrich Alfred Krupp, the German industrialist, was accused of homosexual orgies and eventually committed suicide.


title: Capri

text: Norman Douglas, Jacques d'Adelswärd-Fersen, Christian Wilhelm Allers, Emil von Behring, Curzio Malaparte, Axel Munthe, Louis Coatalen and Maxim Gorky are all reported to have owned a villa there, or to have stayed there for more than three months. Swedish Queen Victoria often stayed there because Axel Munthe was her doctor. Rose O'Neill, the American illustrator and creator of the Kewpie, owned the Villa Narcissus, formerly owned by the famous Beaux-Arts painter Charles Caryl Coleman. Dame Gracie Fields also had a villa and restaurant on the island and is buried there.


title: Capri

text: In 1908, Lenin was hosted by Maxim Gorky, the Russian author, at his house near the Giardini Augusto. In 1970, a monument by Giacomo Manzù was erected during the centennial celebration in Lenin's honour.


title: Capri

text: Capri, as with the Sicilian resort of Taormina, became "high on the list of places to be visited by homosexual northerners", according to Gregory Woods, Chair in Gay and Lesbian Studies. The history of Taormina was changed by the presence of Wilhelm von Gloeden, known for his homoerotic photography, whose studio from 1878-1931 drew many visitors to the town. Both Capri and Taormina were tolerant of gay men and artists, and there was much interchange between the two places. In December 1897 Oscar Wilde was planning to winter in Naples with his lover Lord Alfred Douglas; the couple made a short visit to Capri, but their presence proved too scandalous for even that liberal island ("They even denied us bread!"), so "Bosie" headed back to England and Wilde made his way to Taormina, where he spent time with von Gloeden. Jacques d'Adelswärd-Fersen, who settled in Capri and built Villa Lysis, visited von Gloeden in 1923, bringing with him his schoolboy lover/secretary.


title: Capri

text: Today, Capri has become more of a resort and is visited by tourists during the summer months of July and August. Mariah Carey owns a villa on the island.


title: Capri

text: During the later half of the 19th century, Capri became a popular resort for European artists, writers and other celebrities. The book that spawned the 19th century fascination with Capri in France, Germany, and England was ('Discovery of the Blue Grotto on the Isle of Capri') by the German painter and writer August Kopisch, in which he describes his 1826 stay on the island and his (re)discovery of the Blue Grotto.


title: Capri

text: John Singer Sargent and Frank Hyde are among the prominent artists who stayed on the island around the late 1870s. Sargent is known for his series of portraits featuring local model Rosina Ferrara. The English artist and adventurer, John Wood Shortridge, acquired a fortino at Marina Piccola in the 1880s, (later transformed into a private villa by Dame Gracie Fields) and married a Capri girl, Carmela Esposito. He formed a close friendship with the English novelist George Gissing who provides a colourful and insightful account of his stays with Shortridge in his "Published Letters of George Gissing". In the Gissing Journal, vol. XXXV, no. 3 (July, 1999), p. 2. it is recorded that the only mention of him in a recent book, albeit partially inaccurate, occurs in James Money's "Capri: Island of Pleasure" (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1986, p. 42). Claude Debussy refers to the island's hills in the title of his impressionistic prélude (1910). Capri is the setting for "The Lotus Eater" (1945), a short story by Somerset Maugham. In the story, the protagonist from Hendon, part of the borough of Barnet in London, comes to Capri on a holiday and is so enchanted by the place he gives up his job and decides to spend the rest of his life in leisure there. British novelist Compton Mackenzie lived there from 1913 to 1920, with later visits, and set some of his work on the island (e.g. "Vestal Fire", 1927).


title: Capri

text: As well as being a haven for writers and artists, Capri served as a relatively safe place for foreign gay men and lesbians to lead a more open life; a small nucleus of them were attracted to live there, overlapping to some extent with the creative types mentioned above. Poet August von Platen-Hallermünde was one of the first. Jacques d'Adelswärd-Fersen wrote the (1910) about Capri and its residents in the early 20th century, causing a minor scandal. Fersen's life on Capri became the subject of Roger Peyrefitte's fictionalised biography, . A satirical presentation of the island's lesbian colony is made in Mackenzie's 1928 novel "Extraordinary Women", inspired by the affairs of American painter Romaine Brooks (in the novel, under the pseudonym of Olimpia Leigh). One of the island's most famous foreign gay exiles was Norman Douglas; his novel "South Wind" (1917) is a thinly fictionalised description of Capri's residents and visitors, and a number of his other works, both books and pamphlets, deal with the island, including "Capri" (1930) and his last work, "A Footnote on Capri" (1952).


title: Capri

text: Memoirs set on Capri include Edwin Cerio's (1928) (translated as "That Capri Air"), which contains a number of historical and biographical essays on the island, including a tribute to Norman Douglas; "The Story of San Michele" (1929) by Swedish royal physician Axel Munthe (1857–1949), who built a villa of that name, and Shirley Hazzard's "" (2000), containing her reminiscences of Graham Greene. Graham Greene had a house in the town of Anacapri, the upper portion of the island, where he lived with his lover Catherine Walston.


title: Capri

text: Capri is a tourist destination for both Italians and foreigners. In the 1950s, Capri became a popular resort. In summer, the island is heavily visited by tourists, especially by day trippers from Naples and Sorrento. Many of these visitors make it a point to wear the Capri pants named after the island. The center of Capri is the Piazza Umberto I.


title: Capri

text: Capri is home to the Mediterranean bush, the Arboreal Euphorbia, and the Ilex Wood. The native fauna on the island include quails, robins, peregrine falcons, woodcocks, blackbirds, geckos, red goldfish, conger eels, sargos, groupers, mullets, and the blue lizard of the Faraglioni.


title: Capri

text: Capri has twelve churches, seven museums and several monuments. The most visited attraction in Capri is the ('Blue Grotto'), a cave discovered in the 19th century by foreign tourists. On one side of the grotto are the remains of ancient Roman rock, with a narrow cavern. As of 2018 there were plans to limit access to day tourists.


title: Capri

text: The international luxury linen clothing brand 100% Capri opened its first boutique in the main town of Capri in 2000.


title: Capri

text: Capri is served by ferry or hydrofoil from Naples, Sorrento, Positano and Amalfi as well as by boat services from the ports of the Bay of Naples and the Sorrentine Peninsula. Boats arrive in the morning and leave after lunch (3–4 pm). Naples is served by two ports: Mergellina and Molo Beverello. Molo Beverello has more frequent departures and a larger selection of boats than Mergellina.


title: Capri

text: From Naples, the ferry takes 80 minutes, and the hydrofoil 40 minutes. From Sorrento, the ferry takes about 40 minutes while the hydrofoil takes about 20 minutes.


title: Capri

text: Boats call at Marina Grande, from where the Capri funicular goes up to Capri town. From Anacapri, a chair lift takes passengers to Monte Solaro, the highest point on the island. There is also a bus service that connects the centre of Capri town with Marina Grande, Marina Piccola, Anacapri and other points.


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: Macedonia (; ) is a geographic and former administrative region of Greece, in the southern Balkans. Macedonia is the largest and Greek geographic region, with a population of 2.36 million in 2020. It is highly mountainous, with most major urban centres such as Thessaloniki and Kavala being concentrated on its southern coastline. Together with Thrace, and sometimes also Thessaly and Epirus, it is part of Northern Greece. Greek Macedonia encompasses entirely the southern part of the wider region of Macedonia, making up 51% of the total area of that region. Additionally, it forms part of Greece's borders with three countries: Bulgaria to the northeast, North Macedonia to the north, and Albania to the northwest.


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: Greek Macedonia incorporates most of the territories of ancient Macedon, a kingdom ruled by the Argeads, whose most celebrated members were Alexander the Great and his father Philip II. Before the expansion of Macedonia under Philip in the 4th centuryBC, the kingdom of the Macedonians covered an area corresponding roughly to the administrative regions of Western and Central Macedonia in modern Greece. The name "Macedonia" was later applied to a number of widely-differing administrative areas in the Roman and Byzantine empires. With the gradual conquest of south-eastern Europe by the Ottomans in the late 14th century, the name of Macedonia disappeared as an administrative designation for several centuries and was rarely displayed on maps. With the rise of nationalism in the Ottoman Empire, the name "Macedonia" was revived in the nineteenth century as a geographical term, and for educated Greeks it corresponded to the ancient historical land. The economic ascent of Thessaloniki and of the other urban centres of Macedonia coincided with the cultural and political renaissance of the Greeks. The leader and coordinator of the Greek Revolution in Macedonia was Emmanouel Pappas from Dovista (in Serres), and the revolt spread from Central to Western Macedonia. Letters from the period show Pappas either being addressed or signing himself as "Leader and Defender of Macedonia" and is today considered a Greek hero along with the unnamed Macedonians that fought with him. The fall and massacre of Naoussa marked the end of the Greek Revolution in Macedonia, and the region remained in the Ottoman empire. In the early 20th century the region was already a national cause, contested among the states of Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia. After the Macedonian Struggle and the Balkan Wars (in 1912 and 1913), the modern Greek region of Macedonia became part of the modern Greek state in 1912–13, in the aftermath of the Balkan Wars and the Treaty of Bucharest (1913). It continued as an administrative division of Greece until the reform of 1987, when it was split into the second-level administrative divisions of Western Macedonia and Central Macedonia; while the eastern part, into the Drama-Kavala-Xanthi Super-prefecture until 2010, and part of the Eastern Macedonia and Thrace division after 2010. The region is further divided between the third-level administrative divisions of the Decentralized Administration of Macedonia and Thrace, and the Decentralized Administration of Epirus and Western Macedonia. It also includes the autonomous monastic community of Mount Athos, which is under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (through the civil administrator of Mount Athos) in its political aspect, and of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople in its religious aspect.


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: The region remains an important economic centre for Greece. Greek Macedonia accounts for the majority of Greece's agricultural production and is also a major contributor to the country's industrial and tourism sectors. The metropolis of the region, Thessaloniki is the second-largest city and a major economic, industrial, cultural, commercial and political centre of Greece. Central Macedonia is Greece's tourist region and the most popular destination that is not an island. It is home to four UNESCO World Heritage sites, including Aigai (modern day Vergina, about 12 km (7 mi) from Veria), one of the ancient Macedonian capital cities, where the tomb of Philip II of Macedon is located. Pella (about from modern town of Pella and about from Giannitsa), which replaced Aigai as the capital of Macedon in the fourth century BC and was the birthplace of Alexander the Great, is also located in Greek Macedonia.


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: The name "Macedonia" derives from the (""), a kingdom (later, region) named after the ancient Macedonians, who were the descendants of a Bronze-Age Greek tribe. Their name, (), is cognate to the Ancient Greek adjective (), meaning 'tall, slim'. It is traditionally derived from the Indo-European root , meaning 'long' or 'slender'. Linguist Robert S. P. Beekes supports the idea that both terms are of Pre-Greek substrate origin and cannot be explained in terms of Indo-European morphology. However, Beekes' views are not mainstream and De Decker argues that his arguments are insufficient. The region has historically also been known as in Bulgarian and the local South Slavic dialects, in Turkish, and in Aromanian. is also the name for the region in Megleno-Romanian.


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: Macedonia lies at the crossroads of human development between the Aegean and the Balkans. The earliest signs of human habitation date back to the palaeolithic period, notably with the Petralona cave in which was found the oldest yet known European humanoid, "Archanthropus europaeus petraloniensis". During the early Neolithic period, the settlement of Nea Nikomedeia was developed. In the Late Neolithic period (), trade took place with quite distant regions, indicating rapid socio-economic changes. One of the most important innovations was the start of copper working.


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: According to Herodotus, the history of Macedonia began with the Makednoi tribe, among the first to use the name, migrating to the region from Histiaeotis in the south. There they lived near Thracian tribes such as the Bryges who would later leave Macedonia for Asia Minor and become known as Phrygians. "Macedonia" was named after the Makednoi. Accounts of other toponyms such as Emathia are attested to have been in use before that. Herodotus claims that


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: a branch of the Macedonians invaded Southern Greece towards the end of the second millennium B.C. Upon reaching the Peloponnese the invaders were renamed Dorians, triggering the accounts of the Dorian invasion. For centuries the Macedonian tribes were organised in independent kingdoms, in what is now Central Macedonia, and their role in internal Hellenic politics was minimal, even before the rise of Athens. The Macedonians claimed to be Dorian Greeks (Argive Greeks) and there were many Ionians in the coastal regions. The rest of the region was inhabited by various Thracian and Illyrian tribes as well as mostly coastal colonies of other Greek states such as Amphipolis, Olynthos, Potidea, Stageira and many others, and to the north another tribe dwelt, called the Paeonians. During the late 6th and early 5th century BC, the region came under Persian rule until the destruction of Xerxes at Plataea. During the Peloponnesian War, Macedonia became the theatre of many military actions by the Peloponnesian League and the Athenians, and saw incursions of Thracians and Illyrians, as attested by Thucydides. Many Macedonian cities were allied to the Spartans (both the Spartans and the Macedonians were Dorian, while the Athenians were Ionian), but Athens maintained the colony of Amphipolis under her control for many years. The kingdom of Macedon, was reorganised by Philip II and achieved the union of Greek states by forming the League of Corinth. After his assassination, his son Alexander succeeded to the throne of Macedon and carrying the title of Hegemon of League of Corinth started his long campaign towards the east. After the death of Alexander the Great and the Wars of the Diadochi, Macedonia was a powerful state of Hellenistic Greece.


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: Macedonia remained an important and powerful kingdom until the Battle of Pydna (22 June 168 BC), in which the Roman general Aemilius Paulus defeated King Perseus of Macedon, ending the reign of the Antigonid dynasty over Macedonia. For a brief period a Macedonian republic called the "Koinon of the Macedonians" was established. It was divided into four administrative districts by the Romans in the hope that this would make revolts more difficult, but this manoeuvre failed. Then in 148 BC, Macedonia was fully annexed by the Romans. The northern boundary at that time ended at Lake Ohrid and Bylazora, a Paeonian city near the modern city of Veles. Strabo, writing in the first century AD places the border of Macedonia on that part at Lychnidos, Byzantine Achris and presently Ochrid. Therefore, ancient Macedonia did not significantly extend beyond its current borders (in Greece). To the east, Macedonia ended according to Strabo at the river Strymon, although he mentions that other writers placed Macedonia's border with Thrace at the river Nestos, which is also the present geographical boundary between the two administrative districts of Greece.


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: The Acts of the Apostles () records a vision in which the apostle Paul is said to have seen a 'man of Macedonia' pleading with him, saying, "Come over to Macedonia and help us". The passage reports that Paul and his companions responded immediately to the invitation.


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: Subsequently the provinces of Epirus and Thessaly as well as other regions to the north were incorporated into a new Provincia Macedonia, but in 297 AD under a Diocletianic reform many of these regions were removed and two new provinces were created: Macedonia Prima and Macedonia Salutaris (from 479 to 482 AD Macedonia Secunda). Macedonia Prima coincided approximately with Strabo's definition of Macedonia and with the modern administrative district of Greece and had Thessaloniki as its capital, while Macedonia Salutaris had the Paeonian city of Stobi (near Gradsko) as its capital. This subdivision is mentioned in Hierocles' Synecdemon (527–528) and remained through the reign of emperor Justinian.


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: The Slavic, Avar, Bulgarian and Magyar invasions in the 6–7th centuries devastated both provinces with only parts of Macedonia Prima in the coastal areas and nearer Thrace remaining in Byzantine hands, while most of the hinterland was disputed between the Byzantium and Bulgaria. The Macedonian regions under Byzantine control passed under the tourma of Macedonia to the province of Thrace.


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: A new system of administration came into place in 789–802 AD, following the Byzantine empire's recovery from these invasions. The new system was based on administrative divisions called Themata. The region of Macedonia Prima (the territory of modern Greek administrative district of Macedonia) was divided between the Thema of Thessaloniki and the Thema of Strymon, so that only the region of the area from Nestos eastwards continued to carry the name Macedonia, referred to as the Thema of Macedonia or the Thema of "Macedonia in Thrace". The Thema of Macedonia in Thrace had its capital in Adrianople.


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: Familiarity with the Slavic element in the area led two brothers from Thessaloniki, Saints Cyril and Methodius, to be chosen to convert the Slavs to Christianity. Following the campaigns of Basil II, all of Macedonia returned to the Byzantine state. Following the Fourth Crusade 1203–1204, a short-lived Crusader realm, the Kingdom of Thessalonica, was established in the region. It was subdued by the co-founder of the Greek Despotate of Epirus, Theodore Komnenos Doukas in 1224, when Greek Macedonia and the city of Thessaloniki were at the heart of the short-lived Empire of Thessalonica. Returning to the restored Byzantine Empire shortly thereafter, Greek Macedonia remained in Byzantine hands until the 1340s, when all of Macedonia (except Thessaloniki, and possibly Veria) was conquered by the Serbian ruler Stefan Dušan. After the Battle of Maritsa (1371), Byzantine rule was reestablished in eastern regions, including Serres. During the 1380s, the region was gradually conquered by the advancing Ottomans, with Serres holding out until 1383, and Thessaloniki until 1387. After a brief Byzantine interval in 1403–1430 (during the last seven years of which the city was handed over to the Venetians), Thessaloniki and its immediate surrounding area returned to the Ottomans.


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: The capture of Thessaloniki in 1430 threw the Byzantine world into consternation, being regarded correctly as a prelude to the fall of Constantinople itself. The memory of the event has survived through folk traditions containing fact and myths. Apostolos Vacalopoulos records the following Turkish tradition connected with the capture of Thessaloniki:


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: Thessaloniki became a centre of Ottoman administration in the Balkans. While most of Macedonia was ruled by the Ottomans, in Mount Athos the monastic community continued to exist in a state of autonomy. The remainder of the Chalkidiki peninsula also enjoyed an autonomous status: the "Koinon of Mademochoria" was governed by a locally appointed council due to privileges obtained on account of its wealth, coming from the gold and silver mines in the area.


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: There were several uprisings in Macedonia during Ottoman rule, including an uprising after the Battle of Lepanto that ended in massacres of the Greek population, the uprising in Naousa of the armatolos Zisis Karademos in 1705, a rebellion in the area of Grevena by a Klepht called Ziakas (1730–1810). The Greek Declaration of Independence in Macedonia by Emmanuel Pappas in 1821, during the Greek War of Independence. The revolt spread from Central to Western Macedonia. In the autumn of 1821, Nikolaos Kasomoulis was sent to southern Greece as the "representative of South-East Macedonia", and met Demetrius Ypsilantis. At the beginning of 1822, Anastasios Karatasos and Angelis Gatsos arranged a meeting with other "armatoloi" and decided that the insurrection should be based on three towns: Naoussa, Kastania, and Siatista. In 1854 Theodoros Ziakas, the son of the klepht Ziakas, together with Dimitrios Karatasos, who had been among the captains at the siege of Naousa in 1821, led another uprising in Western Macedonia that has been profusely commemorated in Greek folk song.


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: To strengthen Greek efforts for Macedonia, the Hellenic Macedonian Committee was formed in 1903, under the leadership of Dimitrios Kalapothakis; its members included Ion Dragoumis and Pavlos Melas. Its fighters were known as "Makedonomachoi" ("Macedonian fighters"). Greece helped the Macedonians to resist both Ottoman and Bulgarian forces, by sending military officers who formed bands made up of Macedonians and other Greek volunteers, something that resulted in the Macedonian Struggle from 1904 to 1908, which ended with the Young Turk Revolution. The Macedonians fought alongside the regular Greek army during the struggle for Macedonia. There are monuments in Macedonia commemorating the "Makedonomachoi", the local Macedonian and other Greek fighters, who took part in the wars and died


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: Greece gained the southern parts of the region (with Thessaloniki), which corresponded to that of ancient Macedonia attributed as part of Greek history and had a strong Greek presence, from the Ottoman Empire after the First Balkan War, and expanded its share in the Second Balkan War against Bulgaria. The boundaries of Greek Macedonia were finalised in the Treaty of Bucharest. In World War I, Macedonia became a battlefield. The Greek Prime Minister, Eleftherios Venizelos, favoured entering the war on the side of the Entente, while the Germanophile King Constantine I favoured neutrality. Invited by Venizelos, in autumn 1915, the Allies landed forces in Thessaloniki to aid Serbia in its war against Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria, but their intervention came too late to prevent the Serbian collapse. The Macedonian front was established, with Thessaloniki at its heart, while in summer 1916 the Bulgarians took over Greek eastern Macedonia without opposition. This provoked a military uprising among pro-Venizelist officers in Thessaloniki, resulting in the establishment of a "Provisional Government of National Defence" in the city, headed by Venizelos, which entered the war alongside the Allies. After intense diplomatic negotiations and an armed confrontation in Athens between Entente and royalist forces the King abdicated, and his second son Alexander took his place. Venizelos returned to Athens in June 1917 and Greece, now unified, officially joined the war on the side of the Allies.


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: In World War II Macedonia was occupied by the Axis (1941–44), with Germany taking western and central Macedonia with Thessaloniki and Bulgaria occupying and annexing eastern Macedonia.


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: At the beginning of the 19th century, Slavic peasants identified themselves based on belonging to their family, village, or local region, or as "Rum Millet", i.e. members of the Greek-dominated community of Orthodox Christians. The Slavs of Macedonia generally referred to themselves and were known as "Bulgarians". By the middle of the 19th century, peasant communities of Macedonia experienced the formation of deep divisions with rise of nationalism in the Ottoman Empire. From then, the Slavic speaking communities of northern Greece split into two hostile and opposed groups with two different national identities – Greek and Bulgarian. By the Second World War and following the defeat of Bulgaria, another further split between the Slavic groups occurred. Conservatives departed with the occupying Bulgarian Army to Bulgaria. Leftists who identified as Macedonians (Slavic), joined the communist-dominated rebel Democratic Army of Greece. At the conclusion of the Greek Civil War (1946–49), most Macedonians of Slavic background were evacuated by the Greek Communist Party and forced to flee to the Yugoslav Socialist Republic of Macedonia and other countries in Eastern and Central Europe. Some also immigrated to Canada, Australia, and the United States. Current Greek law still forbids the reentry and restitution of property by Macedonians that are not "Greek by origin."


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: Macedonia is the largest and Greek region. The landscape is characterized by variety, since Western and Eastern Macedonia is mountainous with the exception of some fertile valleys, while the Thessaloniki-Giannitsa plain, the largest in Greece, is located in Central Macedonia. Mount Olympus, the highest mountain in Greece, is located in the Olympus Range on the border between Thessaly and Macedonia, between the regional units of Pieria and Larissa, about 80 km (50 mi) southwest from Thessaloniki. Some other mountain ranges are Vermio Mountains, Pierian Mountains, Voras Mountains. The islands of Macedonia are Thasos, opposite the coasts of Eastern Macedonia and the port of Kavala, and Ammouliani, opposite the coasts of Central Macedonia, in Chalkidiki. Haliacmon, which flows through Kastoria, Grevena, Kozani, Imathia and Pieria regional units, is the longest river in Greece. Some other rivers are Axios (Vardar), Strymonas, Loudias.


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: Since 1987 Macedonia has been divided into three regions (). These are Western Macedonia, Central Macedonia, and Eastern Macedonia, which is part of the region of Eastern Macedonia and Thrace. These three regions are subdivided into 14 regional units () which are in turn further divided into municipalities ( – roughly equivalent to British shires or American Townships). They are overseen by the Ministry for the Interior, while the Deputy Minister for Macedonia and Thrace is responsible for the coordination and application of the government's policies in all three Macedonian regions. Prior to 1987 Macedonia was a single administrative and geographical unit.


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: The heads of the various administrative units are elected. The last Greek local elections were in 2014, and saw Apostolos Tzitzikostas elected regional governor of Central Macedonia, Giorgos Pavlidis in Eastern Macedonia and Thrace, and Theodoros Karypidis in Western Macedonia. Tzitzikostas and Pavlidis are members of the centre-right New Democracy party, while Karypidis is an independent. Elections take place in a two-round system, where the two candidates with the most votes face each other in a second round if no one has managed to get a majority of more than 50% of the votes in the first round. Regional councils, mayors, and other officials are also elected in this way. The next local elections will take place in 2019. The Deputy Minister for Macedonia and Thrace is not an elected position, and is instead appointed at the pleasure of the Prime Minister of Greece. The current Deputy Minister in the Cabinet of Kyriakos Mitsotakis is of New Democracy. The various regions of Greece are also constituencies to the Hellenic Parliament, and Macedonia is represented through its 66 members of parliament. Thessaloniki is split into two constituencies, Thessaloniki A and Thessaloniki B, while Grevena is the smallest constituency with only 1 seat. Thessaloniki A is the second-largest constituency in Greece with 16 MPs.


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: Macedonia is bordered by the neighbouring Greek regions of Thessaly to the south, Thrace (part of Eastern Macedonia and Thrace) to the east, and Epirus to the west. It also includes the autonomous monastic community of Mount Athos, which has existed as a religious sanctuary since the Middle Ages. The community of the mount Athos is under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and is inaccessible to women, punishable by a penalty of incarceration of up to twelve months. This has been criticised by the European Parliament. The territory of Mount Athos is a self-governing part of Greece, and the powers of the state are exercised through a governor appointed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The European Union takes this special status into consideration, particularly on matters of taxation exemption and rights of installation. Macedonia borders the sovereign states of Albania to the north-west, North Macedonia to the north, and Bulgaria to the north-east. The table below is a concise list of the various subdivisions of Macedonia:


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: The Gross Domestic Product of Macedonia peaked at €41.99 billion ($ billion) in nominal value and €46.87 billion ($ billion) in purchasing power parity just before the Great Recession in 2008; it has since then contracted to its lowest point in 2015, during the Greek government-debt crisis, to €30.85 billion ($ billion) and €38.17 billion ($ billion); a decrease of 26.5%. Greece exited its recession, which began in 2009, in 2016 but data from that year onward is not available for the whole of Macedonia; Central Macedonia grew by 0.57% in real terms that year to €23.85 billion ($ billion), while Western Macedonia contracted by 10.6% to €3.85 billion ($ billion). Almost half of the economy, 49%, is centred in the Thessaloniki regional unit, which remained in a recession in 2015, declining by 0.4%.


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: The recession had an impact on the per capita income of the region, especially when compared with the European Union average. Western Macedonia, the region with the highest per capita income, saw it drop from 83% the EU average in 2008 to 59% in 2016. The per capita income of Macedonia in 2015 was €12,900 in nominal and €15,900 in purchasing power terms. The Macedonian economy is primarily service-based, with services contributing €16.46 billion (60.4%) of the region's gross value added in 2015. The industrial and agricultural sectors contributed €9.06 billion (33.3%) and €1.72 billion (6.3%) respectively. The regional labour force was similarly mostly employed in services (60.4%), with industry and agriculture making up 25.6% and 14.0% of the labour force.


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: Macedonia is home to Greece's richest farmland, and the region accounts for of the country's agricultural area (30% of total). Macedonia's agricultural production has historically been dominated by tobacco, with the cash crop being grown in large quantities due to its value. Central and Western Macedonia still produce 41% of Greece's total tobacco, but it only represents 1.4% of these regions' agricultural production value. Nowadays the regional agricultural economy is centered around cereal, fruit, and industrial crops. Overall Central and Western Macedonia account for 25% of the value of Greek agricultural produce (including 41% of fruit and 43% cereal). A brand identity for products made in Macedonia, called "Macedonia the GReat", was launched in 2019 by the Greek government.


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: The European Union considers most of Macedonia to be a less developed region of the Union for its 20142020 funding cycle, and so the region has in recent years benefited from a number of megaprojects co-financed by the Greek government and the EU. These included the Egnatia Odos freeway (€5.93 billion) and the Thessaloniki Metro (€1.85 billion) while the railway network has also been partly electrified, allowing Thessaloniki to be linked with Athens in 3.5 hours through a high speed railway. The Thessaloniki Suburban Railway links the regional capital with Florina, in Western Macedonia, and Larissa, in Thessaly. Thessaloniki Airport is the third-busiest in the country, and the AthensThessaloniki air route was the EU's tenth busiest in 2016. Macedonia's three other airports are Kavala Airport, Kozani Airport, and Kastoria Airport; the two busiest airports, Thessaloniki and Kavala, are operated by Fraport. The Port of Thessaloniki is Greece's second-largest in domestic freight and fourth-largest in international freight by tonnage, while Kavala is Macedonia's other major port.


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: Macedonia, being a border region of an EU member state, benefits from EU programs promoting cross-border economic collaboration both between members of the Union (Bulgaria), as well as the Republic of North Macedonia, an EU candidate country, and Albania. The EU invested €210 million ($ million) in these three programmes for the 20142020 funding cycle. A€10 billion ($ billion) Egnatia Railway crossing Macedonia and linking Alexandroupoli in Western Thrace with Igoumenitsa in Epirus was proposed to the European Commission in 2017 but remains in planning with a projected start date in 2019. If completed, the railway line will be Europe's largest rail megaproject.


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: Central Macedonia is the most popular tourist destination in Greece that is not an island, and its fourth overall, outperforming all other regions of the Greek mainland with 9.7 million overnight stays in 2017. There were a further 2.1 million stays in Eastern Macedonia and Thrace and 294 thousand in Western Macedonia.


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: Macedonia is a diverse region which allows it to cater to a variety of different types of tourism. The Chalkidiki peninsula is Macedonia's most popular beach destination, combining of sandy beaches with dense forests. There were 116 Blue Flag beaches in Macedonia in 2018, 85 of which were in Chalkidiki. Additionally, the region was home to three Blue Flag marinas and one sustainable boating tourism operator. Kavala is an important economic centre of Northern Greece, a center of commerce, tourism, fishing and oil-related activities. Pieria combines extensive plains, high mountains and sandy beaches and the region's beauty gives it a great potential for further tourist development. The island of Thasos, lying close to the coast of eastern Macedonia, is another tourist destination. Chalkidiki is home to Mount Athos, which is an important centre of religious tourism. The mountainous interior allows for hiking activities and adventure sports, while ski resorts like Vasilitsa also operate in the winter months. Macedonia is home to four of Greece's 18 UNESCO World Heritage sites. Vergina is best known as the site of ancient Aigai (Αἰγαί, "Aigaí", Latinized: "Aegae"), the first capital of Macedon. Aigai has been awarded UNESCO World Heritage Site status. In 336 BC Philip II was assassinated in Aigai's theatre and his son, Alexander the Great, was proclaimed king. The most important recent finds were made in 1977 when the burial sites of several kings of Macedon were found, including the tomb of Philip II of Macedon. It is also the site of an extensive royal palace. The archaeological museum of Vergina was built to house all the artifacts found at the site and is one of the most important museums in Greece. Pella, which replaced Aigai as the capital of Macedon in the fourth century BC, is also located in Central Macedonia, as well as Dion in Pieria and Amphipolis. Philippi, located in eastern Macedonia, is another UNESCO World Heritage Site. These are important poles for cultural tourism. Thessaloniki is home to numerous notable Byzantine monuments, including the Paleochristian and Byzantine monuments of Thessaloniki, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, as well as several Roman, Ottoman and Sephardic Jewish structures. Apart from being the cultural centre of Macedonia, Thessaloniki is also a hub for urban tourism and gastronomy. Macedonia is also home to various lake and wetland tourist destinations.


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: The main religion in the Greek region of Macedonia is Christianity, with majority of population belonging to the Eastern Orthodox Church. In early centuries of Christianity, the see of Thessaloniki became the metropolitan diocese of the ancient Roman province of Macedonia. The archbishop of Thessaloniki also became the senior ecclesiastical primate of the entire Eastern Illyricum, and in 535 his jurisdiction was reduced to the administrative territory of the Diocese of Macedonia. In the 8th century, from Rome it came under the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, and remained the main ecclesiastical centre in the historical region of Macedonia throughout the Middle Ages, and up to the modern times.


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: Contemporary Greek Macedonian cooking shares much with general Greek and wider Balkan and Mediterranean cuisine, including dishes from the Ottoman past. Specific influences include dishes of the Pontic, Aromanian, Armenian and Sephardi Jewish population. The mix of the different people inhabiting the region gave the name to the "Macedonian salad".


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: Music of Macedonia is the music of the geographic region of Macedonia in Greece, which is a part of the music of whole region of Macedonia. Notable element of the local folk music is the use of trumpets and koudounia (called in the local dialect).


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: In 2011 the permanent population of the region stood at 2,406,393 residents, a decrease from 2,422,533 in 2001. As of 2017, the population of Macedonia is estimated to have further decreased to 2,382,857. In the 2011 Greek census the capital city, Thessaloniki, had an urban population of 824,676, up from 794,330 in 2001, while its metropolitan population increased to over a million. 281,458 people in Macedonia (or 12% of the population) were born in a foreign country, compared to 11.89% for the whole of Greece. 51.32% of the population was female, and 48.68% male. Like the rest of Greece Macedonia is faced with an aging population; the largest age group in the region is that of the over 70, at 15.59% of the population, while the 0–9 and 10–19 groups combined made up 20.25% of the population. The largest urban centres in Macedonia in 2011 were:


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: The inhabitants of Greek Macedonia are nowadays overwhelmingly ethnic Greeks, and most are also Greek Orthodox Christians. From the Middle Ages to the early 20th century, the ethnic composition of the region of Macedonia is characterised by uncertainty both about numbers and identification. The earliest estimation we have is from the Greek consulate of Thessaloniki in 1884, which according to it the nowadays Greek region of Macedonia had 1,073,000 Greeks (Grecophones, Slavophones, Albanophones), 565,000 Muslims, 215,000 Bulgarians and 16,000 Aromanians. The 1904 Ottoman census of Hilmi Pasha people were assigned to ethnicity according which church/language they belonged, it recorded 373,227 Greeks in the vilayet of Selânik (Thessaloniki), 261,283 Greeks in the vilayet of Monastir (Bitola) and 13,452 Greeks in the villayet of Kosovo. Of those 648,962 Greeks by church, 307,000 identified as Greek speakers, while about 250,000 as Slavic speakers and 99,000 as "Vlach" (Aromanian or Megleno-Romanian). However, these figures extend to territories both inside and outside of Greek Macedonia. Hugh Poulton, in his "Who Are the Macedonians", notes that "assessing population figures is problematic" for the territory of Greek Macedonia before its incorporation into the Greek state in 1913. The area's remaining population was principally composed of Ottoman Turks (including non-Turkish Muslims of mainly Bulgarian and Greek Macedonian convert origin) and also a sizeable community of mainly Sephardic Jews (centred in Thessaloniki), and smaller numbers of Romani, Albanians, Aromanians and Megleno-Romanians.


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: When Macedonia was first incorporated in Greece in 1913, however, Greeks were a marginal plurality in the region. The treaties of Neuilly (1919) and Lausanne (1923) mandated a forceful exchange of populations with Bulgaria and Turkey respectively, and some 776,000 Greek refugees (mostly from Turkey) were resettled in Macedonia, displacing 300,000400,000 non-Greeks who were forced to move as part of the population exchange. The population of ethnic minorities in Macedonia dropped from 48% of the total population in 1920 to 12% in 1928, with the Great Greek Encyclopedia noting in 1934 that those minorities that remained "do not yet possess a Greek national consciousness".


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: The population of Macedonia was greatly affected by the Second World War, as it was militarily occupied by Nazi Germany while its ally, Bulgaria, annexed eastern Macedonia. Germany administered its occupation zone by implementation of the Nuremberg Laws, which saw some 43,00049,000 of Thessaloniki's 56,000 Jews exterminated in the Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps. In its own zone of annexation, Bulgaria actively persecuted the local Greek population with the help of Bulgarian collaborationists. Further demographic change happened in the aftermath of the Greek Civil War, when many Slavs of Macedonia who fought on the side of the Democratic Army of Greece and fought to separate Greek Macedonia from the rest of Greece under the auspices of Yugoslavia, left Greece. These expatriates were the primary source of ethnic Macedonian irredentism and the appropriation of ancient Macedonian heritage.


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: Macedonians (, ) is the term by which ethnic Greeks originating from the region are known. Macedonians came to be of particular importance prior to the Balkan Wars, during the Macedonian Struggle, when they were a minority population inside the multiethnic Ottoman Macedonia. The Macedonians now have a strong regional identity, manifested both in Greece and by emigrant groups in the Greek diaspora. This sense of identity has been highlighted in the context of the Macedonia naming dispute in the aftermath of the break-up of Yugoslavia, in which Greece objected to its northern neighbour calling itself the "Republic of Macedonia". This objection is the direct result of this regional identity, and a matter of heritage for northern Greeks. A characteristic expression of this self-identification was manifested by Prime Minister Kostas Karamanlis at a meeting of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg in January 2007, declaring that "I myself am a Macedonian, and another two and a half million Greeks are Macedonians".


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: In the early-to-mid 20th century Greece was invaded by Bulgaria three times with the aim of capturing portions Macedonia; during the Second Balkan War, during the First World War, and during the Second World War. Additionally, Nazi Germany had promised Thessaloniki to Yugoslavia as a reward for joining the Axis powers. The perceived existence of a foreign danger had a particularly strong effect on the emergence of a distinct regional identity in Macedonia. The representation of the Macedonian Struggle in Penelope Delta's popular 1937 teen novel solidified the image of the chauvinist clash between Greeks and Bulgarians in Macedonia in the minds of many Greeks. Bulgaria was specifically mentioned as the enemy in Greek Macedonia's unofficial anthem, Famous Macedonia, the reference only being replaced by vague 'Barbarians' with the normalization of Greco-Bulgarian relations in the 1970s. During the same period, Manolis Andronikos made major archaeological discoveries at Aigai, the first capital of ancient Macedonia, which included the tomb of Phillip II, Alexander the Great's father. His discoveries were drawn upon as evidence of ethnic and cultural links between the ancient Macedonians and southern Greek city-states by Greeks in Macedonia.


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: The distinct regional identity of Greek Macedonians is also the product of the fact that it was closer to the centres of power in both the Byzantine and Ottoman period, was considered culturally, politically, and strategically more important than other parts of Greece during these two periods, and also the fact that the region had a far more ethnically and religiously diverse population in both the medieval and Ottoman periods. In the late Byzantine period Greek Macedonia had also been the centre of significant Byzantine successor states, such as the Kingdom of Thessalonica, the short-lived state established by the rival Byzantine emperor, Theodore Komnenos Doukas, and – in parts of western Macedonia – the Despotate of Epirus, all of which helped promote a distinct Greek Macedonian identity.


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: In the contemporary period this is reinforced by Greek Macedonia's proximity to other states in the southern Balkans, the continuing existence of ethnic and religious minorities in Eastern Macedonia and Thrace not found in southern Greece, and the fact that migrants and refugees from elsewhere in the Balkans, southern Russia, and Georgia (including Pontic Greeks and Caucasus Greeks from northeastern Anatolia and the south Caucasus) have usually gravitated to Greek Macedonia rather than southern Greece.


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: Greek is the majority language throughout Greece today, with an estimated 5% of the population speaking a language other than Greek, and is the only language of administration and education in the region. Greek is spoken universally in Greek Macedonia, even in the border regions where there is a strong presence of languages other than Greek. The Greek government exhibits some tolerance toward the use of minority languages, though Greece is one of the countries which has not signed the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages; a number of court cases have been brought to the attention of the European Parliament regarding the suppression of minority linguistic rights.


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: Apart from Standard Modern Greek, a number of other Greek dialects are spoken in Macedonia. This includes Pontic Greek, a language spoken originally on the shores of the Black Sea in northeastern Anatolia and the Caucasus, as well as a dialect indigenous to Greek Macedonia and other parts of Northern Greece known as (); spoken by the traditionally transhumant Greek subgroup of Sarakatsani.


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: Macedonia is also home to an array of non-Greek languages. Slavic languages are the most prevalent minority languages in the region, while Aromanian, Arvanitic, Megleno-Romanian, Turkish, and Romani are also spoken. Judaeo-Spanish, also known as , was historically the language of the Jewish community of Thessaloniki, although the Holocaust nearly eradicated the city's previously-vibrant Jewish community of 70,000 to a mere 3,000 individuals today.


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: The exact size of the linguistic and ethnic minority groups in Macedonia is not known with any degree of scientific accuracy, as Greece has not conducted a census on the question of mother tongue since 1951. Aromanians form a minority population throughout much of Macedonia. They largely identify as Greeks and most belong to the Greek Orthodox Church, many refusing to be called a minority group. In the 1951 census they numbered 39,855 in all Greece (the number in Macedonia proper is unknown). Many Aromanian villages can be found along the slopes of the Vermion Mountains and Mount Olympus. Smaller numbers can be found in the Prespes region and near the Gramos mountains. Megleno-Romanians can be found in the Moglena region of Macedonia. The Megleno-Romanian language is traditionally spoken in the 11 Megleno-Romanian villages spread across Greece and the Republic of North Macedonia, including Archangelos, Notia, Lagkadia, and Skra. They are generally adherents to the Orthodox Church while the former majority in Notia was Muslim. Arvanite communities exist in Serres regional unit, while many can also be found in Thessaloniki. There are three Arvanite villages in the Florina regional unit (Drosopigi, Lechovo and Flampouro) with others located in Kilkis and Thessaloniki regional units. Other minority groups include Armenians and Romani. Romani communities are concentrated mainly around the city of Thessaloniki. An uncertain number of them live in Macedonia from the total of about 200,000–300,000 that live scattered on all the regions of Greece.


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: The Macedonian language, a member of the South Slavic languages closely related to Bulgarian, is today spoken mostly in the regional units of Florina and Pella. Due to the sensitivity of the use of term 'Macedonian', the language is euphemistically referred to as (, 'local') or (, 'our (language)').


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: The exact number of the minority is difficult to know as Greece has not collected data on languages as part of its census since 1951. The 1928 census listed 81,984 speakers of 'Slavomacedonian' in Greece, but internal government documents from the 1930s put the number of Macedonian speakers in the Florina prefecture alone at 80,000 or 61% of the population. A field study conducted in 1993 in these two regions under the auspices of the European Parliament found that of the 74 villages studied, Macedonian was spoken in various degrees of vitality in 49 villages and was the primary language in 15 villages. To a lesser extent Macedonian is also present in the regional units of Kastoria, Imathia, Kilkis, Thessaloniki, Serres, and Drama. The Greek language remains dominant in all regions, even in those where Macedonian and other minority languages are present. The total number of 'slavic speakers' in Greece is estimated to range between as low as 10,000 and as high as 300,000.


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: Greece has had varied policies toward the Macedonian language. In 1925 the Greek government introduced the first Macedonian alphabet book, known as the , based on the Florina dialect of the language; this never entered classrooms due to opposition from Serbia and Bulgaria, as well as an outcry against it in Greece. Efforts to assimilate resulted in instances of populations rejecting their Slavic language, as in the village of Atropos in 1959, where the villagers took "the oath before God" to cease speaking the local Slavic idiom and to only speak Greek. The Macedonian language has survived despite efforts by Greek authorities to assimilate the population into the Greek majority. The vast number of Macedonian speakers are ethnic Greeks or possess a Greek national consciousness. It is difficult to ascertain the number of those with a different national consciousness, but estimates of the number of people within Greece that possess an ethnic Macedonian national identity range between 5,000–30,000.


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: Greece claims to respect the human rights of all its citizens, including the rights of individuals to self-identify, but also claims its policy of not recognising an ethnic Macedonian minority is based "on solid legal and factual grounds". However, reports by organisations such as the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the Council of Europe, and the United States Department of State have all concluded that Greek authorities are actively discriminatory against the existence of a Macedonian language, minority, or national identity, even if the situation has improved markedly. An ethnic Macedonian political party, Rainbow, has competed in Greek elections for the European Parliament since 1995. In the 2019 election it received 6,364 votes or 0.11% of the national vote and came 35th in the results table, with most its support coming from Florina where it received 3.33% of the vote.


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: Northern Greece has had Jewish communities since ancient times, including the historically-significant and Greek-speaking Romaniote community. During the Ottoman era Thessaloniki became the centre of a Sephardi community which comprised more than half the city's population, as Ottoman authorities invited Jews who had been expelled from Castille in the aftermath of the Alhambra Decree of 1492 to resettle in the Ottoman Empire. The community nicknamed the city (the mother of Israel) and , and brought with it the Judaeo-Spanish, or , language which became the mother tongue of Thessaloniki Jews. By the 1680s about 300 families of Sephardi followers of Sabbatai Zevi had converted to Islam, becoming a sect known as the "Dönmeh" (converts), and migrated to Thessaloniki, whose population was by that time majority-Jewish. They established an active community that thrived for about 250 years. Many of their descendants later became prominent in trade. Thessaloniki Jews later became pioneers of socialism and the labour movement in Greece.


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: Between the 15th and early 20th centuries, Thessaloniki was the only city in Europe where Jews were a majority of the population. The Great Thessaloniki Fire of 1917 destroyed much of the city and left 50,000 Jews homeless. Many Jews emigrated to the United States, Palestine, and Paris after the loss of their livelihoods, being unable to wait for the government to create a new urban plan for rebuilding, which was eventually done. The aftermath of the Greco-Turkish War and the expulsion of Greeks from Turkey saw nearly 100,000 ethnic Greeks resettled in Thessaloniki, reducing the proportion of Jews in the total community. Following the demographic shift, Jews made up about 20% of the city's population. During the interwar period, Greece granted the Jews the same civil rights as other Greek citizens. In March 1926, Greece re-emphasised that all citizens of Greece enjoyed equal rights, and a considerable proportion of the city's Jews decided to stay.


title: Macedonia (Greece)

text: According to Misha Glenny, such Greek Jews had largely not encountered "anti-Semitism as in its North European form". Though antisemitism was used both by the Metaxas dictatorship and by newspapers such as as part of the wider mechanism for identifying leftists, Greek Jews were either neutral or supportive of Metaxas. By the 1940s, the great majority of the Jewish Greek community firmly identified as both Greek and Jewish. World War II was disastrous for Greek Jews; the Battle of Greece saw Greek Macedonia occupied by Italy, Bulgaria, and Nazi Germany, with the latter occupying much of Central Macedonia and implementing the Nuremberg Laws against the Jewish population. Greeks of the Resistance and Italian forces (before 1943) tried to protect the Jews and managed to save some. In 1943 the Nazis began actions against the Jews in Thessaloniki, forcing them into a ghetto near the railroad lines and beginning their deportation to concentration camps in German-occupied territories. They deported 56,000 of the city's Jews, by use of 19 Holocaust trains, to Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps, where 43,00049,000 of them were killed. Today, a community of around 1,200 remains in the city. Communities of descendants of Thessaloniki Jews – both Sephardic and Romaniote – live in other areas, mainly the United States and Israel. Other cities of Greek Macedonia with significant Jewish population (Romaniote or Sephardi) in the past included Veria, Kavala and Kastoria.


title: Body horror

text: Body horror or biological horror is a subgenre of horror that intentionally showcases grotesque or psychologically disturbing violations of the human body. These violations may manifest through aberrant sex, mutations, mutilation, zombification, gratuitous violence, disease, or unnatural movements of the body. Body horror was a description originally applied to an emerging subgenre of North American horror films, but has roots in early Gothic literature and has expanded to include other media.


title: Body horror

text: According to the film scholar Linda Williams, body horror falls into one of three "gross" genres or "genres of excess" which also includes pornography and melodrama. Williams writes that the success of these body genres "is often measured by the degree to which the audience sensation mimics what is seen on the screen". For example, an audience may experience feelings of terror through horror, sympathy through melodrama, or sexual arousal through pornography. Body horror specifically focuses on the limits and transformative capabilities of the human body.


title: Body horror

text: Body horror often overlaps with, but is distinct from, other horror subgenres. For example, while elements of mutilation may be present in body horror, other similar subgenres such as slasher, splatter, or monster horror may also share this trope, but differ in message and intent. A common difference in the body horror genre is that violations or distortions of the body are rarely the result of immediate or initial violence. Instead, they are generally marked by a loss of conscious control over the body through mutation, disease, or other tropes involving uncontrolled transformation. The genre can invoke intense feelings of physical and psychological disgust, or squick, and play upon anxieties of physical vulnerability. In addition to common tropes used within the broader horror genre, some tropes specific to the body horror subgenre may include invasion, contagion, mutation, transformation, disease, mutilation, or other unnatural or violent distortions of the human body.


title: Body horror

text: The term "body horror" was first used by Phillip Brophy in his 1983 article "Horrality: The Textuality of the Contemporary Horror Film." He coined this term to describe an emerging subgenre which occurred during a short golden period for contemporary horror film. Although Brophy coined the term to specifically describe a trend within cinema, film director Stuart Gordon notes that the body horror trope had existed before its adaptation to the screen, most notably within fictional writing.


title: Body horror

text: Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" (1818) is an early example of the body horror subgenre within fictional writing. The success of gothic horror in the 19th century in combination with the birth of science fiction as a literary form is thought to be the origin of body horror as a literary genre. According to Halberstam: "By focusing on the body as a locus of fear, Shelley's novel suggests that it is people (or at least bodies) who terrify people... the landscape of fear is replaced by sutured skin."


title: Body horror

text: Franz Kafka’s "The Metamorphosis" is another early example of body horror literature. It shows Gregor Samsa transform into a large bug for unknown reasons. The work has influenced other body horrors like "The Fly".


title: Body horror

text: Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg is considered a principal originator of body horror through early films such as "Shivers" and "Rabid", and his remake of "The Fly". However, body horror tropes existed within film prior to official recognition of the genre. Early examples of the body horror genre arose out of 1950s American horror cinema including "The Blob" and "The Fly", both of which set the standard for the genre due to the films' primary focus on mutation and visceral special effects. Many contemporary films of the horror genre (those produced after 1968), including body horror, are considered to be postmodern in contrast to classical horror. Because of this, delineations between the genres are difficult to define, since postmodernism is concerned with blurring boundaries between categories.


title: Body horror

text: The body horror genre is widely represented throughout Japanese horror and within contemporary media, such as anime. Katsuhiro Otomo's 1988 film "Akira" is an early example of body horror within anime. The film uses the genre to explore the "notion of the adolescent body as a site of metamorphosis, a metamorphosis that can appear monstrous both to the figure undergoing it and to the outside world."


title: Body horror

text: Many manga authors, such as Junji Ito, specialize in writing within the horror genre and use body horror tropes in combination with narrative storytelling devices of Japanese horror. Highly influenced by the literary works of H. P. Lovecraft, Ito's manga depict obscene body horror through both aesthetic and narrative in order to invoke feelings of abject terror. In contrast, Canadian cartoonist Michael DeForge incorporates recurring body horror aspects within his work through less graphic aesthetic and narrative styles.


title: Body horror

text: Films and media that fall under the body horror subgenre reflect a specific corporeal societal anxiety and may provide social commentary about history and influence contemporary culture.


title: Body horror

text: Since the 18th century, the horror genre has been popular among readers but dismissed as controversial by some critics who saw the genre and its thematic elements threatening or dangerous to society.


title: Body horror

text: Because of the use of graphic and gratuitous violence or themes that may be considered taboo, horror media that fall within the body horror genre are often censored or banned across a variety of countries. For example, the "Saw" and "Human Centipede" franchises have been referred to as "torture porn" and widely criticized to include overly "exploitative, gratuitous portrayals of destructive sexual perversion."


title: String instrument

text: String instruments, stringed instruments, or chordophones are musical instruments that produce sound from vibrating strings when a performer plays or sounds the strings in some manner.


title: String instrument

text: Musicians play some string instruments by plucking the strings with their fingers or a plectrum—and others by hitting the strings with a light wooden hammer or by rubbing the strings with a bow. In some keyboard instruments, such as the harpsichord, the musician presses a key that plucks the string. Other musical instruments generate sound by striking the string.


title: String instrument

text: With bowed instruments, the player pulls a rosined horsehair bow across the strings, causing them to vibrate. With a hurdy-gurdy, the musician cranks a wheel whose rosined edge touches the strings.


title: String instrument

text: Bowed instruments include the string section instruments of the orchestra in Western classical music (violin, viola, cello and double bass) and a number of other instruments (e.g., viols and gambas used in early music from the Baroque music era and fiddles used in many types of folk music). All of the bowed string instruments can also be plucked with the fingers, a technique called "pizzicato". A wide variety of techniques are used to sound notes on the electric guitar, including plucking with the fingernails or a plectrum, strumming and even "tapping" on the fingerboard and using feedback from a loud, distorted guitar amplifier to produce a sustained sound. Some string instruments are mainly plucked, such as the harp and the electric bass. In the Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification, used in organology, string instruments are called chordophones. Other examples include the sitar, rebab, banjo, mandolin, ukulele, and bouzouki.


title: String instrument

text: In most string instruments, the vibrations are transmitted to the body of the instrument, which often incorporates some sort of hollow or enclosed area. The body of the instrument also vibrates, along with the air inside it. The vibration of the body of the instrument and the enclosed hollow or chamber make the vibration of the string more audible to the performer and audience. The body of most string instruments is hollow. Some, however—such as electric guitar and other instruments that rely on electronic amplification—may have a solid wood body.


title: String instrument

text: In musicology, string instruments are known as chordophones. It is one of the five main divisions of instruments in the Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification.


title: String instrument

text: Hornbostel-Sachs divides chordophones into two main groups: instruments without a resonator as an integral part of the instrument (which have the classification number 31, also known as simple); and instruments with such a resonator (which have the classification number 32, also known as composite). Most western instruments fall into the second group, but the piano and harpsichord fall into the first. Hornbostel and Sachs' criterion for determining which sub-group an instrument falls into is that if the resonator can be removed without destroying the instrument, then it is classified as 31. The idea that the piano's casing, which acts as a resonator, could be removed without destroying the instrument, may seem odd, but if the action and strings of the piano were taken out of its box, it could still be played. This is not true of the violin, because the string passes over a bridge located on the resonator box, so removing the resonator would mean the strings had no tension.


title: String instrument

text: Dating to around c. 13,000 BC, a cave painting in the Trois Frères cave in France depicts what some believe is a musical bow, a hunting bow used as a single-stringed musical instrument. From the musical bow, families of stringed instruments developed; since each string played a single note, adding strings added new notes, creating bow harps, harps and lyres. In turn, this led to being able to play dyads and chords. Another innovation occurred when the bow harp was straightened out and a bridge used to lift the strings off the stick-neck, creating the lute.


title: String instrument

text: This picture of musical bow to harp bow is theory and has been contested. In 1965 Franz Jahnel wrote his criticism stating that the early ancestors of plucked instruments are not currently known. He felt that the harp bow was a long cry from the sophistication of the civilizations of western Asia in 4000 BC that took the primitive technology and created "technically and artistically well-made harps, lyres, citharas, and lutes."


title: String instrument

text: Archaeological digs have identified some of the earliest stringed instruments in Ancient Mesopotamian sites, like the lyres of Ur, which include artifacts over three thousand years old. The development of lyre instruments required the technology to create a tuning mechanism to tighten and loosen the string tension. Lyres with wooden bodies and strings used for plucking or playing with a bow represent key instruments that point towards later harps and violin-type instruments; moreover, Indian instruments from 500 BC have been discovered with anything from 7 to 21 strings.


title: String instrument

text: Musicologists have put forth examples of that 4th-century BC technology, looking at engraved images that have survived. The earliest image showing a lute-like instrument came from Mesopotamia prior to 3000 BC. A cylinder seal from c. 3100 BC or earlier (now in the possession of the British Museum) shows what is thought to be a woman playing a stick lute. From the surviving images, theorists have categorized the Mesopotamian lutes, showing that they developed into a long variety and a short. The line of long lutes may have developed into the tamburs and pandura. The line of short lutes was further developed to the east of Mesopotamia, in Bactria, Gandhara, and Northwest India, and shown in sculpture from the 2nd century BC through the 4th or 5th centuries AD.


title: String instrument

text: During the medieval era, instrument development varied in different regions of the world. Middle Eastern rebecs represented breakthroughs in terms of shape and strings, with a half a pear shape using three strings. Early versions of the violin and fiddle, by comparison, emerged in Europe through instruments such as the gittern, a four-stringed precursor to the guitar, and basic lutes. These instruments typically used catgut (animal intestine) and other materials, including silk, for their strings.


title: String instrument

text: String instrument design was refined during the Renaissance and into the Baroque period (1600–1750) of musical history. Violins and guitars became more consistent in design and were roughly similar to acoustic guitars of the 2000s. The violins of the Renaissance featured intricate woodwork and stringing, while more elaborate bass instruments such as the bandora were produced alongside quill-plucked citterns, and Spanish body guitars.


title: String instrument

text: In the 19th century, string instruments were made more widely available through mass production, with wood string instruments a key part of orchestras – cellos, violas, and upright basses, for example, were now standard instruments for chamber ensembles and smaller orchestras. At the same time, the 19th-century guitar became more typically associated with six-string models, rather than traditional five-string versions.


title: String instrument

text: Major changes to string instruments in the 20th century primarily involved innovations in electronic instrument amplification and electronic music – electric violins were available by the 1920s and were an important part of emerging jazz music trends in the United States. The acoustic guitar was widely used in blues and jazz, but as an acoustic instrument, it was not loud enough to be a solo instrument, so these genres mostly used it as an accompaniment rhythm section instrument. In big bands of the 1920s, the acoustic guitar played backing chords, but it was not loud enough to play solos like the saxophone and trumpet. The development of guitar amplifiers, which contained a power amplifier and a loudspeaker in a wooden cabinet, let jazz guitarists play solos and be heard over a big band. The development of the electric guitar provided guitarists with an instrument that was built to connect to guitar amplifiers. Electric guitars have magnetic pickups, volume control knobs and an output jack.


title: String instrument

text: In the 1960s, larger, more powerful guitar amplifiers were developed, called "stacks". These powerful amplifiers enabled guitarists to perform in rock bands that played in large venues such as stadiums and outdoor music festivals (e.g., Woodstock Music Festival). Along with the development of guitar amplifiers, a large range of electronic effects units, many in small stompbox pedals were introduced in the 1960s and 1970s, such as fuzz pedals, flangers, and phasers enabling performers to create unique new sounds during the psychedelic rock era. Breakthroughs in electric guitar and basses technologies and playing styles enabled major breakthroughs in pop and rock music in the 1960s and 1970s. The distinctive sound of the amplified electric guitar was the centerpiece of new genres of music such as blues rock and jazz-rock fusion. The sonic power of the loudly amplified, highly distorted electric guitar was the key element of the early heavy metal music, with the distorted guitar being used in lead guitar roles, and with power chords as a rhythm guitar.


title: String instrument

text: The ongoing use of electronic amplification and effects units in string instruments, ranging from traditional instruments like the violin to the new electric guitar, added variety to contemporary classical music performances, and enabled experimentation in the dynamic and timbre (tone colour) range of orchestras, bands, and solo performances.


title: String instrument

text: It is also possible to divide the instruments into categories focused on how the instrument is played.


title: String instrument

text: All string instruments produce sound from one or more vibrating strings, transferred to the air by the body of the instrument (or by a pickup in the case of electronically amplified instruments). They are usually categorised by the technique used to make the strings vibrate (or by the primary technique, in the case of instruments where more than one may apply.) The three most common techniques are plucking, bowing, and striking. An important difference between bowing and plucking is that in the former the phenomenon is periodic so that the overtones are kept in a strictly harmonic relationship to the fundamental.


title: String instrument

text: Plucking is a method of playing on instruments such as the veena, banjo, ukulele, guitar, harp, lute, mandolin, oud, and sitar, using either a finger, thumb, or quills (now plastic plectra) to pluck the strings.


title: String instrument

text: Instruments normally played by bowing (see below) may also be plucked, a technique referred to by the Italian term "pizzicato".


title: String instrument

text: Bowing (Italian: "arco") is a method used in some string instruments, including the violin, viola, cello, and the double bass (of the violin family), and the old viol family. The bow consists of a stick with a "ribbon" of parallel horse tail hairs stretched between its ends. The hair is coated with rosin so it can grip the string; moving the hair across a string causes a stick-slip phenomenon, making the string vibrate, and prompting the instrument to emit sound. Darker grades of rosin grip well in cool, dry climates, but may be too sticky in warmer, more humid weather. Violin and viola players generally use harder, lighter-colored rosin than players of lower-pitched instruments, who tend to favor darker, softer rosin.


title: String instrument

text: The ravanahatha is one of the oldest string instruments. Ancestors of the modern bowed string instruments are the rebab of the Islamic Empires, the Persian kamanche and the Byzantine lira. Other bowed instruments are the rebec, hardingfele, nyckelharpa, kokyū, erhu, igil, sarangi, morin khuur, and K'ni. The hurdy-gurdy is bowed by a wheel. Rarely, the guitar has been played with a bow (rather than plucked) for unique effects.


title: String instrument

text: The third common method of sound production in stringed instruments is to strike the string. The piano and hammered dulcimer use this method of sound production. Even though the piano strikes the strings, the use of felt hammers means that the sound that is produced can nevertheless be mellow and rounded, in contrast to the sharp attack produced when a very hard hammer strikes the strings.


title: String instrument

text: Violin family string instrument players are occasionally instructed to strike the string with the stick of the bow, a technique called "col legno". This yields a percussive sound along with the pitch of the note. A well-known use of "col legno" for orchestral strings is Gustav Holst's "Mars" movement from "The Planets" suite.


title: String instrument

text: The aeolian harp employs a very unusual method of sound production: the strings are excited by the movement of the air.


title: String instrument

text: Some instruments that have strings have an attached keyboard that the player presses keys on to trigger a mechanism that sounds the strings, instead of directly manipulating the strings. These include the piano, the clavichord, and the harpsichord. With these keyboard instruments, strings are occasionally plucked or bowed by hand. Modern composers such as Henry Cowell wrote music that requires that the player reach inside the piano and pluck the strings directly, "bow" them with bow hair wrapped around the strings, or play them by rolling the bell of a brass instrument such as a trombone on the array of strings. However, these are relatively rarely used special techniques.


title: String instrument

text: Other keyed string instruments, small enough for a strolling musician to play, include the plucked autoharp, the bowed nyckelharpa, and the hurdy-gurdy, which is played by cranking a rosined wheel.


title: String instrument

text: Steel-stringed instruments (such as the guitar, bass, violin, etc.) can be played using a magnetic field. An E-Bow is a small hand-held battery-powered device that magnetically excites the strings of an electric string instrument to provide a sustained, singing tone reminiscent of a held bowed violin note.


title: String instrument

text: Third bridge is a plucking method where the player "frets" a string and strikes the side opposite the bridge. The technique is mainly used on electric instruments because these have a pickup that amplifies only the local string vibration. It is possible on acoustic instruments as well, but less effective. For instance, a player might press on the seventh fret on a guitar and pluck it at the head side to make a tone resonate at the opposing side. On electric instruments, this technique generates multitone sounds reminiscent of a clock or bell.


title: String instrument

text: Electric string instruments, such as the electric guitar, can also be played without touching the strings by using audio feedback. When an electric guitar is plugged into a loud, powerful guitar amplifier with a loudspeaker and a high level of distortion is intentionally used, the guitar produces sustained high-pitched sounds. By changing the proximity of the guitar to the speaker, the guitarist can produce sounds that cannot be produced with standard plucking and picking techniques. This technique was popularized by Jimi Hendrix and others in the 1960s. It was widely used in psychedelic rock and heavy metal music.


title: String instrument

text: There are three ways to change the pitch of a vibrating string. String instruments are tuned by varying a string's tension because adjusting length or mass per unit length is impractical. Instruments with a fingerboard are then played by adjusting the length of the vibrating portion of the strings. The following observations all apply to a string that is infinitely flexible (a theoretical assumption, because in practical applications, strings are not infinitely flexible) strung between two fixed supports. Real strings have finite curvature at the bridge and nut, and the bridge, because of its motion, is not exactly nodes of vibration. Hence the following statements about proportionality are approximations.


title: String instrument

text: Pitch can be adjusted by varying the length of the string. A longer string results in a lower pitch, while a shorter string results in a higher pitch. A concert harp has pedals that cause a hard object to make contact with a string to shorten its vibrating length during a performance. The frequency is inversely proportional to the length:


title: String instrument

text: Pitch can be adjusted by varying the tension of the string. A string with less tension (looser) results in a lower pitch, while a string with greater tension (tighter) results in a higher pitch. Pushing a pedal on a pedal steel guitar raises the pitch of certain strings by increasing tension on them (stretching) through a mechanical linkage; release of the pedal returns the pitch to the original. Knee levers on the instrument can lower a pitch by releasing (and restoring) tension in the same way. A homemade washtub bass made out of a length of rope, a broomstick and a washtub can produce different pitches by increasing the tension on the rope (producing a higher pitch) or reducing the tension (producing a lower pitch). The frequency is proportional to the square root of the tension:


title: String instrument

text: The pitch of a string can also be varied by changing the linear density (mass per unit length) of the string. In practical applications, such as with double bass strings or bass piano strings, extra weight is added to strings by winding them with metal. A string with a heavier metal winding produces a lower pitch than a string of equal length without a metal winding. This can be seen on a 2016-era set of gut strings for double bass. The higher-pitched G string is often made of synthetic material, or sometimes animal intestine, with no metal wrapping. To enable the low E string to produce a much lower pitch with a string of the same length, it is wrapped with many wrappings of thin metal wire. This adds to its mass without making it too stiff. The frequency is inversely proportional to the square root of the linear density:


title: String instrument

text: Given two strings of equal length and tension, the string with higher mass per unit length produces the lower pitch.


title: String instrument

text: The length of the string from nut to bridge on bowed or plucked instruments ultimately determines the distance between different notes on the instrument. For example, a double bass with its low range needs a scale length of around , whilst a violin scale is only about . On the shorter scale of the violin, the left hand may easily reach a range of slightly more than two octaves without shifting position, while on the bass' longer scale, a single octave or a ninth is reachable in lower positions.


title: String instrument

text: In bowed instruments, the bow is normally placed perpendicularly to the string, at a point halfway between the end of the fingerboard and the bridge. However, different bow placements can be selected to change timbre. Application of the bow close to the bridge (known as "sul ponticello") produces an intense, sometimes harsh sound, which acoustically emphasizes the upper harmonics. Bowing above the fingerboard ("sul tasto") produces a purer tone with less overtone strength, emphasizing the fundamental, also known as "flautando", since it sounds less reedy and more flute-like.


title: String instrument

text: Bowed instruments pose a challenge to instrument builders, as compared with instruments that are only plucked (e.g., guitar), because on bowed instruments, the musician must be able to play one string at a time if they wish. As such, a bowed instrument must have a curved bridge that makes the "outer" strings lower in height than the "inner" strings. With such a curved bridge, the player can select one string at a time to play. On guitars and lutes, the bridge can be flat, because the strings are played by plucking them with the fingers, fingernails or a pick; by moving the fingers or pick to different positions, the player can play different strings. On bowed instruments, the need to play strings individually with the bow also limits the number of strings to about six or seven strings; with more strings, it would be impossible to select individual strings to bow. (Note: bowed strings can also play two bowed notes on two different strings at the same time, a technique called a double stop.) Indeed, on the orchestral string section instruments, four strings are the norm, with the exception of five strings used on some double basses. In contrast, with stringed keyboard instruments, 88 courses are used on a piano, and even though these strings are arranged on a flat bridge, the mechanism can play any of the notes individually.


title: String instrument

text: Similar timbral distinctions are also possible with plucked string instruments by selecting an appropriate plucking point, although the difference is perhaps more subtle.


title: String instrument

text: In keyboard instruments, the contact point along the string (whether this be hammer, tangent, or plectrum) is a choice made by the instrument designer. Builders use a combination of experience and acoustic theory to establish the right set of contact points.


title: String instrument

text: In harpsichords, often there are two sets of strings of equal length. These "choirs" usually differ in their plucking points. One choir has a "normal" plucking point, producing a canonical harpsichord sound; the other has a plucking point close to the bridge, producing a reedier "nasal" sound rich in upper harmonics.


title: String instrument

text: A single string at a certain tension and length only produces one note. To produce multiple notes, string instruments use one of two methods. One is to add enough strings to cover the required range of different notes (e.g., as with the piano, which has sets of 88 strings to enable the performer to play 88 different notes). The other is to provide a way to "stop" the strings along their length to shorten the part that vibrates, which is the method used in guitar and violin family instruments to produce different notes from the same string. The piano and harp represent the first method, where each note on the instrument has its own string or course of multiple strings tuned to the same note. (Many notes on a piano are strung with a "choir" of three strings tuned alike, to increase the volume.) A guitar represents the second method—the player's fingers push the string against the fingerboard so that the string is pressed firmly against a metal fret. Pressing the string against a fret while plucking or strumming it shortens the vibrating part and thus produces a different note.


title: String instrument

text: Some zithers combine stoppable (melody) strings with a greater number of "open" harmony or chord strings. On instruments with stoppable strings, such as the violin or guitar, the player can shorten the vibrating length of the string, using their fingers directly (or more rarely through some mechanical device, as in the nyckelharpa and the hurdy-gurdy). Such instruments usually have a fingerboard attached to the neck of the instrument, that provides a hard flat surface the player can stop the strings against. On some string instruments, the fingerboard has frets, raised ridges perpendicular to the strings, that stop the string at precise intervals, in which case the fingerboard is also called a "fretboard".


title: String instrument

text: Moving frets during performance is usually impractical. The bridges of a koto, on the other hand, may be moved by the player occasionally in the course of a single piece of music. Many modern Western harps include levers, either directly moved by fingers (on Celtic harps) or controlled by foot pedals (on orchestral harps), to raise the pitch of individual strings by a fixed amount. The Middle Eastern zither, the qanun, is equipped with small levers called "mandal" that let each course of multiple strings be incrementally retuned "on the fly" while the instrument is being played. These levers raise or lower the pitch of the string course by a microtone, less than a half step.


title: String instrument

text: Some instruments are employed with sympathetic strings—which are additional strings not meant to be plucked. These strings resonate with the played notes, creating additional tones. Sympathetic strings vibrate naturally when various intervals, such as the unisons or the octaves of the notes of the sympathetic strings are plucked, bowed or struck. This system is used on the sarangi, the grand piano, the hardanger fiddle and the rubab.


title: String instrument

text: A vibrating string strung on a very thick log, as a hypothetical example, would make only a very quiet sound, so string instruments are usually constructed in such a way that the vibrating string is coupled to a hollow resonating chamber, a soundboard, or both. On the violin, for example, the four strings pass over a thin wooden bridge resting on a hollow box (the body of the violin). The normal force applied to the body from the strings is supported in part by a small cylinder of wood called the soundpost. The violin body also has two "f-holes" carved on the top. The strings' vibrations are distributed via the bridge and soundpost to all surfaces of the instrument, and are thus made louder by matching of the acoustic impedance. The correct technical explanation is that they allow a better match to the acoustic impedance of the air.


title: String instrument

text: It is sometimes said that the sounding board or soundbox "amplifies" the sound of the strings. In reality, no power amplification occurs, because all of the energy to produce sound comes from the vibrating string. The mechanism is that the sounding board of the instrument provides a larger surface area to create sound waves than that of the string and therefore acts as a matching element between the acoustic impedance of the string and that of the surrounding air. A larger vibrating surface can sometimes produce better matching; especially at lower frequencies.


title: String instrument

text: All lute type instruments traditionally have a bridge, which holds the string at the proper action height from the fret/finger board at one end of the strings. On acoustic instruments, the bridge performs an equally important function of transmitting string energy into the "sound box" of the instrument, thereby increasing the sound volume. The specific design, and materials used in the construction of the bridge of an instrument, have a dramatic impact upon both the sound and responsiveness of the instrument.


title: String instrument

text: Achieving a tonal characteristic that is effective and pleasing to the player's and listener's ear is something of an art and craft, as well as a science, and the makers of string instruments often seek very high quality woods to this end, particularly spruce (chosen for its lightness, strength and flexibility) and maple (a very hard wood). Spruce is used for the sounding boards of instruments from the violin to the piano. Instruments such as the banjo use a drum, covered in natural or synthetic skin as their soundboard.


title: String instrument

text: Acoustic instruments can also be made out of artificial materials, such as carbon fiber and fiberglass (particularly the larger, lower-pitched instruments, such as cellos and basses).


title: String instrument

text: In the early 20th century, the Stroh violin used a diaphragm-type resonator and a metal horn to project the string sound, much like early mechanical gramophones. Its use declined beginning about 1920, as electronic amplification through power amplifiers and loudspeakers was developed and came into use. String instrument players can electronically amplify their instruments by connecting them to a PA system or a guitar amplifier.


title: String instrument

text: Most string instruments can be fitted with piezoelectric or magnetic pickups to convert the string's vibrations into an electrical signal that is amplified and then converted back into sound by loudspeakers. Some players attach a pickup to their traditional string instrument to "electrify" it. Another option is to use a solid-bodied instrument, which reduces unwanted feedback howls or squeals.


title: String instrument

text: Amplified string instruments can be much louder than their acoustic counterparts, so musicians can play them in relatively loud rock, blues, and jazz ensembles. Amplified instruments can also have their amplified tone modified by using electronic effects such as distortion, reverb, or wah-wah.


title: String instrument

text: Bass-register string instruments such as the double bass and the electric bass are amplified with bass instrument amplifiers that are designed to reproduce low-frequency sounds. To modify the tone of amplified bass instruments, a range of electronic bass effects are available, such as distortion and chorus.


title: String instrument

text: The string instruments usually used in the orchestra, and often called the "symphonic strings" or string section are:


title: String instrument

text: When orchestral instrumentation specifies "strings," it often means this combination of string parts. Orchestral works rarely omit any of these string parts, but often include additional string instruments, especially the concert harp and piano. In the Baroque orchestra from the 1600s–1750 (or with modern groups playing early music) harpsichord is almost always used to play the basso continuo part (the written-out bass line and improvised chords), and often a theorbo or lute or a pipe organ. In some classical music, such as the string quartet, the double bass is not typically used; the cello plays the bass role in this literature.


title: Dirty Harry (film series)

text: Dirty Harry is an American neo-noir vigilante action thriller film series featuring San Francisco Police Department Homicide Division Inspector "Dirty" Harry Callahan. There are five films: "Dirty Harry" (1971), "Magnum Force" (1973), "The Enforcer" (1976), "Sudden Impact" (1983) and "The Dead Pool" (1988). Clint Eastwood portrayed Callahan in all five films and directed "Sudden Impact".