Between 1720 and 1770, Moscopole was an important commercial and industrial centre inhabited by the descendants of the Latin provincials of Illyricum named Vlachs, which the Slavs themselves have borrowed from the Goths.

1. Moscopole
City of Shepherds
Alex Dragomirescu®
2018

2. Storia degli Aromuni nel Medioevo, tratta dalla British Encyclopedia del 1911:
..."Byzantium, which had ceased to be Roman, and had become Romanic,
renewed its acquaintance with the descendants of the Latin provincials of
Illyricum through a Slavonic medium, and applied to them the name of Vlach,
which the Slav himself had borrowed from the Goth. The first mention of
Vlachs in a Byzantine source is about the year 976, when Cedrenus (ii. 439)
relates the murder of the Bulgarian tsar Samuel’s brother " by certain Vlach
wayfarers,“ …

3. At the end of the Middle Ages, the Aromanian shepherds from Epirus and
southern Albania were enjoying local autonomy, privileges and
considerable freedom of movement they had inherited from Byzantine
emperors.

4. By the beginning of the modern epoch, many Aromanians had elevated their
original status and had become wealthy merchants, caravan guides and
important landowners in the region.
At crossroads and other favorable locations, they founded such ‘burgs’ as
Călăritzi, Siracu, Gramostea, Metzova, Clisura, and Moscopole. Until 1700,
these benefited the status of clients to the commercial system of Venice and
France. After 1700, some towns, such as Metzova and Moscopole, developed
their own economy, and came to possess large hinterlands.
An 18th
Century Cultural and Commercial Metropolis of
Aromanians/Vlachs

5. Coat of Arms
Between 1720 and 1770, Moscopole was an important commercial and industrial
center, whose guilds controlled the manufacturing of weapons and silverware, the
weaving of cloth and carpets, etc. Through a network of well-maintained roads,
guarded by the caravans’ gendarmerie, the Moscopolian merchants carried their
cargo to the great centers of Macedonia, Greece, and even further away to Venice,
Trieste, Vienna, Leipzig, Timişoara and Braşov, to Egypt and the Middle East.

6. The Moscopolian traders journeyed far and wide and, from Western Europe,
where some of them had opened chambers of commerce, they brought to
Moscopole not only diverse merchandise, but also the ideas of the
Enlightenment. Reaching the 18th
century Transylvania, they “lived the lofty
experience of national consciousness awakening”, contributed money to the
printing of books written by Romanian clerics, teachers and students from
Transylvania and Banat, and prided themselves on being descendants of
Romans.”

7. “The economic growth of Moscopole fostered remarkable cultural
development, similar to that of the great Western European centers.
Moscopolians could pride themselves on monumental buildings,
numerous churches whose paintings can be admired even today (24
churches for a population of 24,000 inhabitants), on several schools, on
their New Academy (Νεα Άκαδεμία), and on their print workshop,
which, except for those existing in the Romanian Principalities was the
only one in the Ottoman Empire at that time.”

8. New Academy
The New Academy or Greek Academy was a renowned educational
institution, operating from 1743 to 1769 in Moscopole, the metropolis
of Aromanians and leading center of Greek culture. It was nicknamed
the “worthiest jewel of the city” and played a very active role in the
inception of the modern Greek Enlightenment movement.

9. Nea Akadaemia
It was in such a cultural atmosphere that the earliest authors who
wrote and had their works published in Aromanian appeared in
Moscopolis. They were Teodor Anastas Cavalioti (1728?-1786),
Daniil Moscopoleanul (the Moscopolian), his much younger
contemporary, and Constantin Ucuta.

10. Teodor Cavalioti returned to Moscopolis in
1750, where he was appointed headmaster of the
Academy. was the soul of the Moscopolis
Academy: there, he taught grammar, poetics,
philosophical disciplines, and theology. The
most important work of Cavalioti is the
Πρατοπειρία, the “Primer” The book was
conceived as a sort of manual for primary school
children and includes the fundamentals of
reading and arithmetic, prayers, proverbs,
fragments from the Bible, and a 1,170-word
Greek-Aromanian-Albanian vocabulary, one of
the earliest of this kind, which is very unusual
for those times.

11. Syntagmation orthodoxon, 1746

12. Eisagoge grammatikes (Introduction in Grammar), 1760

13. Early monuments of the Balkan
languages, the prints of
Cavalioti and Daniil may be
considered the most beautiful
gifts for the culture of the world
and the peoples of the Balkans,
following the intellectual
movement from Moscopolis.

14. The City of Martyrized Churches

15. St. John the Baptist's Monastery

16. St. Nicholas'
Church (1721)

17. St. Nicholas'
Church

18. St. Nicholas' Church

19. St. Nicholas' Church

20. St. Nicholas' Church

21. St. Nicholas' Church

22. St. Athanasius' Church

23. St. Athanasius' Church

24. St. Athanasius' Church

26. St. Mary's Church

27. St. Mary's Church

28. St. Mary's
Church

29. St. Mary of the
Assumption's
Church

30. St. Mary of the Assumption's
Church

31. St. Mary of the Assumption's
Church

32. St. Mary of the Assumption's
Church

34. St. Michael's Church

35. St. Elias' Church

36. St. Charalampus' Church

38. Moscopole 1900

39. Tourist Center 2010

41. Notable Moscopolites
 Mihail Boiagi
 Ioannis Chalkeus
 Theophrastos Georgiadis
 Daniel Mоscopolites
 Theodore Kavalliotis
 Georgios Konstantinidis
 Dionysios Mantoukas - Orthodox bishop
 Ioakeim Martianos - Orthodox bishop
 Sinas family (Georgios Sinas and Simon Sinas)
 Dimitrios Procopiou (Pamperis) - scholar
 Nektarios Terpos
 Konstantinos Tzechanis
 Constantin Ucuta
 Constantin Smolensky or Smolenic, high rank officer of the Greek Army in the Greco-Turkish war of
1897 and the Cretan revolution (1866-1867).

42. Notable Vlachs