Melas () is a mountainous village in the regional unit of Kastoria, Macedonia, Greece. It belongs to the municipality of Kastoria and specifically to the municipal unit of Korestia. The previous name of the village was Statista (or Stathista or Agios Efstathios after the homonymous Orthodox church of Agios Efstathios). A museum dedicated to Pavlos Melas and the Greek struggle for Macedonia now operates in the village.
Name Before 1927 the village was called Statista (, ). The name of the village was changed to Melas, after the Greek fighter (makedonomachos) Pavlos Melas who lost his life there.
History In 1873, the village was recorded as having 60 households with 180 male Bulgarian inhabitants.„Македония и Одринско. Статистика на населението от 1873 г.“ Македонски научен институт, София, 1995. стр. 108-109.
In 1900, Vasil Kanchov gathered and compiled statistics on demographics in the area and reported that the village of Statitsa was inhabited by about 600 Christian Bulgarian inhabitants.Vasil Kanchov (1901). Кънчов, Васил. Македония. Етнография и статистика, София, 1900, стр. 266. (Macedonia: Ethnography and Statistics, p. 266. Accessed 08 February 2018 (in Bulgarian)
On October 12, 1904, Pavlos Melas and his group headed to Statista (modern-day Melas). In the village, the native collaborator of Melas, Dinas Stergiou () divided the men of the group into five houses. In the village, however, there was an organized Bulgarian army, a member of which alerted the Ottoman army to the presence of the Greek army. On October 13, the village was surrounded by an Ottoman detachment of 150 men and a fighting broke out. The dawn of the next day would find Pavlos Melas dead under an unspecified area.
In 1945, Greek Foreign Minister Ioannis Politis ordered the compilation of demographic data regarding the Prefecture of Kastoria.. The village Melas had a total of 717 inhabitants, and was populated by 707 Slavophones with a Bulgarian national consciousness. "(Άνω και Κάτω) Μελά, Πληθυσμός: 717, Σλαυόφωνοι: 707, Συνείδησις Βουλγαρική: ναι"
References
External links The end of Pavlos Melas and the sources (in Greek) from istorikaxronika.com