^{This page is part of © FOTW Flags Of The World website}

Arta (Municipality, Greece)

Άρτα

image by Tomislav Šipek, 18 February 2022

Presentation of Arta
Flag of Arta
Former municipality of Arta

See also:

Presentation of Arta

The municipality of Arta (43,166 inhabitants in 2011; 43,680 ha) was formed in the 2011 local government reform by the merger of the former municipalities of Arta (27,330 inh.), Amvrakikos (Αμβρακικός, 4,742 inh.), Filothei (Φιλοθέη, 5,800 inh.), Vlacherna (Βλαχέρνα, 3,326 inh.), and Xirovouni (Ξηροβούνι, 4,083 inh.).

The first settlement in the area of the modern city dates to the 9th century BC and is known as Ambracia. In 295 BC Pyrrhus of Epirus, king of the Molossians, transferred the capital of his kingdom to Ambracia, which he used as a base from which he attacked the Romans. In 146 BC, Ambracia became part of the Roman empire.
The town is not mentioned under the name of Arta until 1082. In 1204, after the fall of Constantinople to the Crusaders, Arta became the capital of the Despotate of Epirus. After brief conquests of the city by the Italian dynasty of Orsini (1318-1337), Serbian Empire (1337-1359), Albanian clans (1359-1416) and Italian rulers (Carlo II Tocco, Leonardo III Tocco), the Ottoman Empire conquered it in 1449 and renamed it Narda. It was occupied by Venetians in 1717 and the French in 1797, but the Ottomans retook it in 1799. The city was taken from the Ottomans and annexed to Greece in 1881 by the Treaty of Berlin.

Olivier Touzeau, 16 July 2013

Flag of Arta

The flag of Arta features a purple line drawing of an arched bridge.

http://www.arta.gr/2021

Tomislav Šipek, 18 February 2022

The bridge of Arta is a stone bridge of the river Arachthos. It dates back to the 17th century and became famous for the eponymous legendary traditional song that refers to its “human sacrifice” foundation [see below].
The original construction of the bridge of Arta is placed in the years of the ancient city of Amvrakia during the reign of King Pyrrhus I.
The bridge of Arta acquired its current form in the 17th century. The length of the bridge reaches 142 meters and its width is 3.75 meters. It consists of four large arches and three smaller ones, the four semicircular arches have no symmetry with each other. Its pedestals are built with large regular stones in the isodomic system, with a crown, so that they resemble the masonry of Hellenistic mansions.

In 1881, when Arta was liberated by agreement, the bridge was the border of free Greece with the Turkish-occupied Greece. The two-story neoclassical building at the western end of the bridge, built in 1864 by an Austrian architect and now housed the Arta Folklore Museum, was originally used as an Ottoman bridge outpost and later in 1881 as a border station, the Ottoman Customs.

https://epirus.travel/listing/the-historical-stone-bridge-of-arta
Epirus Travel

Forty-five masons and apprentices sixty
were building a bridge across Arta's river
All day long they founded it, at night it would fall.
The masons grieve and the apprentices all weep:
"What a shame for all our efforts, a waste of all our toil
That what we build each day would collapse at night!"

A little bird flew by and perched across the river
It did not chatter and cheep as a bird, nor chirped as a swallow
It sang and spoke in a human voice:
"No bridge shall stand without a human lustration sacrifice
And sacrifice no orphan nor traveler, no stranger will suffice
Save only the Chief Mason's lovely wife
who comes late in the morning and belated at noon and brings him, by-and-by, his lunch."

The Chief Mason listens and is shocked as stricken to death
He sends a message to his well-figured wife by the nightingale
To slowly dress, and slowly change, and tarry with the lunch
That she be late to come and late to cross the bridge at Arta.
But the bird misheard and flew and told her differently:
"Swiftly dress, and swiftly change, and hurry with the lunch
That you be swift to go and swift to cross the bridge at Arta."

There she appears strolling down the bright sunlit path
The Chief Mason saw her and his heart was broken
From afar she waves to them and from nearby she greets them:
"Good day, and health to you all, apprentices and masons!
But what is wrong with the Chief Mason and he has such a mournful demeanor?"
"His ring he dropped into the first foundation chamber;
and who can go in and come out and who can find and fetch it?"
"Building Meister, take heart, for I will go and fetch it
I'll go in, come out, and your ring I'll bring."

She neither got down far, nor did she reach halfway down
"Pull, my dear, the chain; pull up the chains.
I've turned it inside out, yet nothing have I found."
One mason slaps on mortar with his trowel; another slaps lime;
The Chief Mason heaves and drops a giant boulder.

"Alas, poor is my fate and my destiny accursed!
Sisters three we were, and doomed we were all three.
One built over the Danube, one the Euphrates river
And me, the youngest, I build the bridge at Arta.
‘May the bridge shake, like the rifles do,
May crossing pedestrians fall, like the tree leaves do’"

"Maiden, change your word and give another curse
for you have a one dear brother who may cross this bridge."
And she changed her word and pronounced another:
May the bridge shake, like the wild mountains do
May crossing pedestrians fall, like the wild birds do
for I have a brother abroad who may cross this bridge."

https://www.windmills-travel.com/article.php?id=651&destination=18&destinationtype=city

Ivan Sache, 20 February 2022

Former municipality of Arta

image by Olivier Touzeau, 16 July 2013

The former flag of Arta (Kokkonis website) was quarterly divided, blue in the canton and in the lower fly, orange in the other parts, with a white disk in the center on which is the municipal seal.
The seal shows the Bridge of Arta, an old stone bridge that crosses river Arachthos. The bridge has been rebuilt many times over the centuries; the current bridge is probably a 17th-century Ottoman construction.

Olivier Touzeau, 16 July 2013