Diagram by Greece Trips. Free to reuse with credit - CC BY 4.0.
That citadel is the Kastro, and it is the reason to give the city a night rather than passing through on the way to the mountains.
Why “best-preserved” is the operative phrase
Greece has Ottoman remains in many towns. What Ioannina has is a citadel that survived as a whole rather than as fragments - walls, gates and the quarter inside them.
We carry the superlative as our own guide states it and add nothing to it: no wall length, no construction date, no builder. Our sources give none, and a citadel that has been rebuilt across centuries is exactly the wrong place to guess.
The island in the lake
The other rare thing, and it pairs with the Kastro on the same day.
The lake island holds several monasteries and the house where Ali Pasha was cornered and killed, now a museum with the bullet holes in the floor. Boats run frequently, and between the village, the monasteries and the lakeside path it is a comfortable half day.
Ali Pasha was the Albanian-born governor who ruled Ioannina semi-independently of the Ottoman Sultan around the turn of the nineteenth century, and the city’s museums tell his story without romanticising it.
The city beyond the walls
Ioannina is a substantial university city with a long silversmithing tradition, a covered market area, and a lakefront promenade that the city uses in the evening.
That evening promenade is the best free thing here, and it is the moment the place stops being a sight and becomes somewhere people live.
Perama cave, on the edge of town, is a large stalactite system open to visitors.
What the city is really the gateway to
Zagori and the Vikos gorge in the mountains to the north; Dodona, the ancient oracle with a large theatre, about half an hour south; and Metsovo and the Pindus range to the east.
Practical notes
Getting there: an airport with domestic flights, and the Egnatia motorway makes it about four and a half hours from Thessaloniki and rather more from Athens.
Two nights for the city, more if you are using it for Zagori.
We print no museum hours or ticket prices. Our own guide flags that museum hours and boat services change.
Common questions
What is the Kastro? The walled Ottoman citadel, the best preserved in Greece, on the lake.
Is Ioannina worth a stop? Two nights for the city, and more if you are using it as the door to Zagori - which is the practical case for staying rather than passing through.
Who was Ali Pasha? The Albanian-born governor who ruled Ioannina semi-independently of the Ottoman Sultan around the turn of the nineteenth century.
Next
Our Ioannina guide has the practicalities, Perama cave covers the stalactites, and where to stay covers the lake and the citadel.