We stopped in Permet because Jennifer had been unable to obtain her supply of statins, and the surgery at Alrewas was unwilling to e-mail the prescription to a chemist in Berlin. So we needed an address for the pills to be sent to, and I tried to book a hotel at Konitsa in Greece. I eventually booked the Hotel Ramizi in Permet before discovering amid much mirth, not to say derision, from some quarters that Permet was in Albania.
The room was clean, the bed comfortable, the shower hot, the breakfast delicious (all home-made with different types of cheese, freshly-baked sweet bread rolls and fig jam) and the owner and his wife most charming. A real gem of a hotel and thoroughly recommended for the price of 20 euros.
Permet is a fairly recent town established during the Ottoman Empire to administer a number of small towns and villages in the area. During the era of conversions to Islam in the 18th century, Christian Albanian speaking areas such as the region of Rrëzë strongly resisted those efforts, in particular the village of Hormovë and the town of Përmet. In 1778, a Greek school was established and financed by the local Orthodox Church and the diaspora of the town.[
Përmet was one of the main centers of the Albanian National Awakening. After a successful revoltin 1833 the Ottoman Empire replaced Ottoman officials in the town with local Albanian ones and proclaimed a general amnesty for all those who had been involved in the uprising. The artisans of the kaza of Përmet held the monopoly in the trade of opinga in the vilayets of Shkodër and Janina until 1841, when that privilege was revoked under the Tanzimat reforms. In 1882 Greek education was expanded with the foundation of a Greek girls’ school subsidized by members of the local diaspora that lived in Constantinople, as well as the Greek national benefactor, Konstantinos Zappas. The first Albanian-language school of the town was founded in the beginning of 1890 by Llukë Papavrami, a teacher from Hotovë, who had the endorsement of Naim Frasheri.
In 1912, during the First Balkan War the population founded a committee that had as its goal the organization of the local resistance. In a 28 December rally through the town centre people of Permet agreed they must fight where the nation most needed. In February 1913, units of the advancing Greek Army entered the town without facing Ottoman resistance, while the resistance of the local population was not sufficient due to small amount of arms. In 1914, Përmet became part of the Autonomous Republic of Northern Epirus, During the Greco-Italian War, on December 4, 1940, the town came under the control of the advancing forces of the Greek II Army Corps. Përmet returned to Axis control in April 1941. In May 1944 the National Liberation Movement, having driven the Italians out, held in the town the congress, which elected the provisional government of Albania. During the Communist era Përmet held the title of the Hero City.
The town is dominated by the “Rock of the City, a huge rock which can be climbed up a ladder with 120 steps.
We then drove into Greece, stopping to take a pic of this beautiful 4th century Byzantine church.
We spent the night under the walls of the 4th century Nicopolis just outside Preveza.
