Just short of a half century after the death of Christ, Saint Paul traveled here to convert the natives under Roman rule and was thrown into prison. Pilgrims nowadays come to visit the place at the edge of the ruined city that bears the inscription of his cell, which is more likely an old cistern. A ruler of the Macedonian dynasty that came to govern the empire of Byzantium, the rough-and-ready Basil II, known as the Bulgar Slayer, loved Philippi. He made it his de facto capital and shied away from the fabled city of gorgeous wonders. Just a few broken things remain of Philippi's Byzantine attractions: the walls of a great basilica, lovely geometric ceramic paving, the carved pillars that show the precursors of medieval church art elsewhere in Europe. The region, however, is full of impressive remnants of Byzantium's secular might—fortresses abound, and among the most impressive is the fortress overlooking the nearby city of Kavala.

Anna is a native of Kavala and, more notably, somebody who has taken on a mighty project to put Kavala back on the sophisticated traveler's map. As we left Philippi, I bought the one guide in a language other than Greek—German—at the little shack at the gates of Philippi, and Anna and I drove to Kavala.

The travel writer Robin Mead has called Kavala probably the most beautiful town in Greece after Athens. Since Athens is not what you'd commonly call beautiful, that doesn't seem a hard reputation to live up to, but Kavala is, all the same, a pleasant white city, clean and bright these days. It ranges from the foothills of Mount Symvolon down to an ample port with cafés and restaurants and more serious maritime activities at the shipyards, where big wooden fishing boats get refurbished by artisans hard at work at their traditional craft. The old Turkish town, etched with winding streets, covers the hillsides below the Byzantine fortress. Up there, Anna Missirian has taken on the labor of her life.

Anna is a sea captain's daughter who married into Greece's richest tobacco family. She has determination wrapped in undeniable charm, both of which she needs to cut through an imbroglio of confrontations and conflicts to achieve something of human value. After negotiating for seven years, Anna has a fifty-year lease on the Imaret, a poorhouse (later a school) founded during the time of Turkish rule by Mehmet Ali, the first king of Egypt, who started the dynasty that began in 1804 and ended in 1952 with Farouk. Mehmet was born a few yards away from the Imaret. Both his home and the religious school were once in total dilapidation, but Anna has invested time, energy, and considerable funds to convert them into something that goes beyond a hotel: a beautiful place full of history without glitz, conducive to repose and contemplation, with no sectarian affiliation.

I had dinner there one night with Anna and several of her friends—by candlelight, because the electricity had not yet been installed. We ate and drank, and a local writer and musician played a bouzouki and sang rebetiko. Rebetiko is the fado of this region, rough songs of loss and nostalgia that are a particular genre of the Greeks who were driven out of the region of Smyrna in 1922, during the horrible takeover by the Turks. Many came to this part of Greece. But there are also large numbers of Turks who have been here for centuries. Turkish farmers are the tobacco growers. They pick one by one the small leaves of basma tobacco, which companies the world over consider the most precious element in a cigarette blend. This region is considered unmatched for growing basma.