Agios Achilleios

Agios Achilleios (Άγιος Αχίλλειος, before 1926: Αχίλλειον – Achilleion ) is a village in the Florina Regional Unit in West Macedonia, Greece. It is one of only two inhabited lake islands in Greece, the other being Ioannina Island.

History
The village is located on the island of the same name in Small Prespa Lake.

For a brief period in the 10th century, the island served as the last capital of the First Bulgarian Empire under Tsar Samuel. It was he who ordered the remains of Saint Achillius to be transported here from Larisa and buried beneath a specially built basilica on the island. From then on, the island was known as Agios Achilleios (St Achillius) or simply Achillius. In 1014, Tsar Samuel suffered a fatal heart attack after hearing about the Bulgarian loss in the Battle of Kleidion and was buried beneath the basilica.

The island became part of Greece in 1913 following the Balkan Wars. In February 1948, in the midst of the Greek Civil War, Nikos Zachariadis, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Greece, married Roula Koukoulou, his long-time lover, on this island, in a widely publicized ceremony.

The island was one of the last places to be captured by government forces during the Civil War. It remained a sensitive border zone for most of the Cold War, sparsely inhabited and inaccessible to non-residents without a special permit. As relations between Greece and Yugoslavia thawed in the mid-1970s, it began to be promoted as a tourist destination. Until 2000, when a floating bridge was built, children would travel to school on the mainland by boat in summer and walk across the frozen lake in winter.

Demographics
Agios Achilleios had 31 inhabitants in 1981. In fieldwork done by Riki Van Boeschoten in late 1993, Agios Achilleios was populated by Slavophones. The Macedonian language was spoken in the village by people over 30 in public and private settings. Children understood the language, but mostly did not use it.