Kilkis

Kilkis is a city in Central Macedonia, in northern Greece, and the capital of the regional unit that bears its name. At the 2021 count, 24,130 people lived in the city proper, 27,493 in the municipal unit and 45,308 in the wider municipality of Kilkis, which was formed in the 2011 local government reform by merging seven former municipalities. The region around the city was multi-ethnic in the recent past, so the place carries several names: Callicum or Callicus in Roman and early Byzantine times, Kalkis and later Kilkis, and Kukush in Bulgarian and Macedonian. Tombs of the second millennium BC have been excavated in the vicinity, and in classical antiquity the wider region was ruled by the kingdom of Macedon. In the twentieth century the area became a war theatre several times, from the Macedonian Struggle and the Balkan Wars to the two world wars, the Greek Resistance and the Greek Civil War. After the Second Balkan War of 1913 the Greek army captured the town, which was set on fire and then rebuilt closer to the railway to Thessaloniki.