Kastoria

Kastoria (, Kastoriá ) is a city in northern Greece in the region of Western Macedonia. It is the capital of the Kastoria regional unit, in the geographic region of Macedonia. It is situated on a promontory on the western shore of Lake Orestiada, in a valley surrounded by limestone mountains. The city is known for its many Byzantine churches, Byzantine and Ottoman-era domestic architecture, its lake and its fur clothing industry.

== Name == In the 6th century, the historian Procopius wrote the name Kastoria was used for the lake. The first reference to the town of Kastoria is by historian John Skylitzes writing about the late 10th century. The toponym Kastoria means "place of beavers" and is derived from kastori (καστόρι), the Greek word for beaver and an animal whose local habitat was along the shores of lake Kastoria. The name of the town is sometimes written as Castoria, especially in older works. The town is known as Kesriye in Turkish, Kostur (Cyrillic: Костур) in Bulgarian and Macedonian, Kosturi in Albanian and Kusturea in Aromanian.