The extent of the city, as it stretches backwards and laterally from the fortress, is greater than the same population would occupy in the towns of other parts of Europe. Besides the vacant spaces of the mosques and Turkish burying-grounds, all the better houses both of Turks and Greeks have areas attached to them, in which there generally grow a few trees, giving to the general view of the place that singular intermixture of buildings and wood which has already been noticed. The central part of the city, occupied in great part by the streets forming the Bazars, is the only one where much continuity is preserved; and here the houses are in general much lower and smaller than elsewhere. The breadth of the town, which nowhere exceeds a mile and a half, is defined by a range of low eminences, running parallel to the shore of the lake, and affording from their summit one of the most striking views of the city, the lake, and the distant heights of the Pindus chain.
The interior aspect of Ioannina, except where there is some opening to the landscape that surrounds it, is gloomy, and without splendour. Few of the streets preserve an uniform line; a circumstance which makes the geography of the place very difficult to the stranger. Those inhabited by the lowest classes consist in great part of wretched mud-built cottages, and are chiefly in the outskirts of the city; the middle ranks dwell in a better description of buildings, the upper part of which is constructed of wood, with a small open gallery under the projecting roof; the higher classes, both of Greeks and Turks, have in general very large houses, often forming two or three sides of the areas attached to them, and with wide galleries which go along the whole front of the building, taken as it were from the first floor, and sheltered under the roofs. In this style of building, which is common throughout the Turkish towns, there is something picturesque in the distant effect, which is lost in the nearer approach. In the best streets of Ioannina, there is an air of heaviness: and the most respectable houses have the aspect of prisons.
