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“Where there’s smoke there’s fire.” Far from
the negative innuendos hidden in the everyday
use of this adage, in the case of Kavala, the
third largest city of the North and the most
significant harbour of eastern Macedonia,
these words seem to fit perfectly. In the not
too distant past, Kavala was known as “The
Tobacco City of the North” or even “The
Mecca of Tobacco.”
Due to the proximity to areas where the
variety of “basmas”, the world’s most fragrant
tobacco was cultivated, and because of the
city’s direct access to sea routes, tobacco
farming started in Kavala at the beginning
of the 19th century. It was an integral part
of the city’s history for over 150 years and
transformed Kavala into a strong player of the
tobacco trade on the Balkan Peninsula.
Since the cultivation and commercial
exploitation of tobacco were prohibited to
the Ottomans, the Greeks undertook the
processing and soon the use of tobacco spread
all over Greece. As mentioned above, the
climate and the proximity to the harbour
were the key factors that led to the cultivation
of the most noble of all tobacco varieties in
the world, the famous and spicy “basmas”,
religions and peoples created a unique THE
also known as Eastern tobacco. The tobacco
trade lured to Kavala people from all corners
of the earth; different customs and traditions,
medley that brought prosperity to the area.
Bank branches and consulates of European
countries were established in Kavala and
tobacco became inextricably linked to the BLUE CITY
sociopolitical history of the city, as was the
case with other tobacco-producing regions
in Greece. Kavala was clearly living its
heyday. The new wind of cosmopolitanism

110 GREC14N 2018