They could not ask to return to their homeland, the historic Pontos, the area between Sinope and the city of Athena east of Trapezous (Trebizond), in today's Turkey; for them, no conditions of safety existed there.
This the idea of creating a city between the ancient Greek cities of Maronia and Mesembria, where the Thracian land meets the Thracian Sea was born out of these profound historical changes and the turbulence these were causing. It was a proposal for an Ithaca, so that this time the routes, the "voyage," the new Odyssey of the new refugees would be short, prespecified, and without too much wandering, too many wounds, and suffering.

The reasons, however, for founding the city were not just a response to the request for the settlement of the new Pontian refugees the city as a hospitable Ithaca. They were much deeper.

The idea of the city, its gestation and birth, was the product of a deeper, and polymorphous, process. It expressed a more profound historical product. The physical extermination of the Pontians the genocide of the period 1916-1923, and their uprooting from their historic homeland, the subsequent repeated disarticulations of their newly founded communities, the elimination, for state reasons, of their right to historical memory they all created conditions for the distortion of their Pontian identity, and threatened their existence and continuity as Pontians.

Thus the idea of the city expressed their agony for existence and identity, their hope for continuity. It expressed historically accumulated deep thoughts, sentiments of nostalgia for their origin, pride in belonging to a group with a strong identity a group that made great contributions to the civilisation of the Euxinos Pontos, and to the civilisation of humanity .It expressed the need for a point of reference, a metropolis, with an urban structure and architecture rich in signs of history, symbolisms and memories, where this history and civilization would be visible an architecture that would gather and protect a history which for centuries has been scattered and persecuted, and that, at the same time, would create, would give birth to, new history .

On another occasion in their history, during the Ottoman period a period of continuous flight and exodus from Pontos the Pontians had given an answer to their historic existential question and dilemma, "What must we do in order to continue existing?" by creating a new city at the location of ancient Dioskouriaslo on the south eastern coast of the Euxinos Pontos. Essentially, they turned a Turkish fort, the Sochum kale, into a city, Sochum, a beautiful Pontian city which has, unfortunately, suffered much destruction lately.

The idea, nevertheless, of the city came not only from history, from memories, and from the need for an identity; it was to have a role, a dynamic extension, into the future. The big geopolitical changes at the end of the 1980s restored those historically natural functions of communication among peoples, civilizations, products, and goods that had been artificially severed. The Aegean was reunited with the Balkans and the Euxinos Pontos. We encountered the process of the return of history, geography, economy not their end.
An area, Thrace, which decades of geopolitical segregation had transformed into an underdeveloped border area, was returning, was recovering its position as a central area, as a center, as it had always been in history, from Homer, to Thucydides, to Constantine the Great, the founder of the New Rome Constantinople to a vizier's exhortation to the sultan in the 17th century to build a city in that area.

The new city will undertake the meeting and interconnection of these new historic and geopolitical trends. Few pieces of land on our planet are of such geoeconomic importance as the approximately two hundred kilometers separating the new city from the Bulgarian city of Burgas in the Euxinos Pontos. Its geopolitical and geo-economic position comprises its most valuable asset, ensuring its successful creation, development, and prosperity. Indeed, it could not be richer in revenue, a revenue that primarily emanates from its position. It does not require too much intelligence to comprehend such a fact a look at the map suffices. The contribution of the city to its surrounding area an area comprising both a maritime zone and an inland area, where in antiquity many more cities existed can be expressed by what the creation of a new city meant to the ancient Greeks: for them, it was the passage from deserted, uncultivated wild zones and seas, as they are today, to creation; from chaos, to cosmos. We will thus bring this area from chaos to cosmos.

Through those itineraries from Pontos, Thrace, the Balkans, the Euxinos Pontos, the idea of the city, the city as a product of today's needs, transcends geographic boundaries and brings forward a wider role, an ecumenicity. It will be at the same time Pontian, Thracian, Balkan, Euxinian, expressing these dimensions in its urban structure, its architecture, its aesthetics, its symbols, its civilization it will be an ecumenical city. This synchronisation and synthesis of history, of past and future, of old and new identities, is expressed by the city's name, ROMANIA. It is the answer to the nostalgia, the yearning, the expectation of the anonymous Pontian poet, after the Turk's conquest of Constantinople in 1453, that the city would bloom again. An expectation that was expressed in the Pontian verse, "Though ROMANIA has passed, it blooms and brings forth more" averse which inspired the Alexandrian (the founding of Alexandria marked a historic turning point in the concept of a city) poet Constantine Cavafy in his poem Parthen ("It Was Taken").

The "brings forth more" of the anonymous poet was our idea for the city ROMANIA . At the same time, the name ROMANIA is a reference and a message of renewed communication and cooperation, to the common conscience of all the Balkan and the Euxenian peoples. The Romaiike, Orthodox, religious, cultural consciousness and identity which is returning, characterizes and unifies a much broader geocultural sphere. Italian, German, and Dutch cartographers of previous centuries named this area ROMANIA. It is also becoming more widely known that ROMANIA was what was later named Byzantium by European historians. A remnant of this name is the name of the district of Romagnia in the area of Bologna and Ravenna, with its famous mosaics.

The idea, however, of the city expressed a people's deeper individual and collective moral, aesthetic, ecological, and human needs. Attainment of a high quality natural and residential environment has formed apart of the Pontian tradition, identity, and aesthetic, since antiquity. Examples of this civilization were the dreamlike amphitheatric cities, theater cities, on the shores of the Euxinos Pontos Amissos, Kotyora, Cerasous, Tripolis, Trapezous and the architectural creations, a synthesis of classical and Byzantine forms, of the Pontian maestros that adorned Asia Minor and, especially, Cappadocia.

Following the violent detachment from this natural, urban, architectural environment by means of biological massacre, and an attempt, lasting only a few decades, to reproduce these aesthetic and architectural values in Greece, anew uprooting and anew massacre took place: the great offense, that is, on Greek nature, civilization, and history; the massacre in recent decades of Greece's natural, urban, and architectural landscape. This violent process has caused great distortions and disorders of the internal and external ecology of individuals and of groups, on their anthropology, their spirituality, and their aesthetics.

Therefore, the idea of the city was not just a resistance to the ideology of the oblivion of history, but was also a resistance, a flight, a transcendence of the ideology of ugliness that has ruled in Greece, and especially in the "capital," for decades now. This ideology has transformed a country, a nation, known for its presence and contribution to human civilization through the concept of the "face" (the ancient statues and the Byzantine, Orthodox, Greek hagiography testify to this contribution) to a country, a nation, without a "face." This ideology has accumulated, has led to, cities and buildings without a "face" mere expressions and products of a defeated civilization, a civilization that is not Greek.

Hence the new city is a pursuit of our lost selfportrait and selfconsciousness. It is the recovery of the meaning of the city as an architectural, urban, aesthetic concept, as harmony with the natural environment, as Demos and Agora.

This heavenly theater city, which will have its seats at the foot of Mt. Ismaros and its stage on the shore, is the ideal place for regaining those meanings and forms that cannot exist under the conditions of those ugly formations of today's Greece, called cities. It will exemplify civilization. Wounded by the genocide, the uprooting, the catastrophe of the Greek urban and natural landscape, we will have a city to love, and which will love us in return. It will be beautiful, it will make us beautiful, we will ma-ke it beautiful. It will make us citizens, we will make it a Demos.

It was only natural that our proposal for the city would transcend our national borders, and would create European and universal interest, as well as sentiments of cooperation, togetherness, and solidarity in joint creative efforts. All this was expressed through our meeting with the very dear community of professors and students of the Department of Urban Planning at the Polytechnic School of Stuttgart. A city that has proven, over the last two decades, that it could defeat death, and return to life and beauty; a sister city of ROMANIA, a city whose Thracian and Pontian citizens embraced the creation of the new city with warmth, as is shown by their contribution towards the publication of this book.

Our meeting with the Department of Urban Planning at the Polytechnic School of Stuttgart conveys two important messages. The first comes from history: in the beginning of the third decade of the previous century, German urban planners and architects, representatives of a great philhellenic wave that swept the whole of Europe, came to Greece to contribute to the renaissance, the Palingenesis, of an ancient nation, Greece, that was emerging from a centuries long barbaric, Ottoman, Middle Ages. Some of their neoclassical architectural masterpieces adorn parts of Athens that escaped the massacre. The group of Stuttgart is the successors of those great forerunners, at a period when Hellenism is found between its final decline and its new Palingenesis, an expression of which is ROMANIA. The second message addresses, it answers, the challenge for a new European synthesis. Our creative getting together and walking along together shows another road for building a Europe of men and women, citizens, peoples, civilization, science, volunteerism, and solidarity. This another road, another model, for a new Europe has been born and created. Already another itinerary is following the example set in Stuttgart: it started lately and brings ROMANIA from the Polytechnic School of Thessaloniki, to those of Milan, Barcelona, Havana, Mexico City, and Buenos Aires.
When we talked about the city ten years ago, a circle of people in power, but also in society at large, whom we could call "Impossibilists" their motto being "It is impossible to do" said that it was a utopia. We admitted that it was, indeed, a utopia, because the Pontians had no place ( u-topos means no place) and were looking to find one. This place they found at the foot of Mt. Ismaros and by the shores of the Thracian Sea where, according to mythology, Odysseus (Ulysses) met the Cyclops Polyphemus. The Maronite wine was made from the grapes that grew on the mountainsides of Mt. Ismaros there were many vineyards at the time -and, according to Homer, this was the wine that Odysseus gave to Polyphemus in order to escape from him. This wine, with the same name of origin, will come back to life along with ROMANIA and its inhabitants.

It is on these mountainsides facing a few miles away the Ellispontos (Hellespont), which leads to the Propontis, and on to the Pontos that our place of settlement will lie. It seems that our critics did not know that, according to Plato, cities have their prototypes in the sky. However, ROMANIA today is not a utopia, it is not just in the sky .Thanks to the work of those five young people a work that expresses their love of life, humanity, Greece ROMANIA is images, streets, squares, buildings, harbors, parks, libraries, theaters, temples, gates, entrances, exits. It is beginning to have a face, a soul, flesh and bones; it lies in your hands.

Today, whatever prejudices and resistance to the idea of this city existed, have collapsed. What is left to be done is for the Greek Parliament to pass a bill, in the following months, for the allotment of land and for the financial contribution of the Greek state in support of our great project. It might thus be relieved from the Erinyes, and the guilt that should burden it, in the face of the tragic reality of the new Pontian refugees arriving in Greece.

In 2004 eight hundred years will have elapsed since the founding of the Empire of Trapezous (Trebizond), which for two and a half centuries developed a rich civilization, being on the Silk Route at the crossroads between Europe and Asia. I wish, with the help of the gods, the saints, and people that on the eight hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Empire of Trapezous, ROMANIA and its citizens will be ready to welcome citizens from all the continents of our planet. I wish that it will be ready to welcome especially the Islamized Pontians of the historic Pontos, who are today using the temple of the patron saint of Trapezous, St. Eugene, as a place of worship a temple which was turned into a mosque. Our first invitation will be addressed to them, so that we can celebrate our reunion, and our return to history after decades since our parting and our separation from history, in the temple of St. Eugene in ROMANIA , a replica of the temple in Trapezous, which is under construction.

However, we will not stop with ROMANIA.. This is only the beginning. The new Greek Palingenesis that Hellenism needs if it wants to exist and live under conditions of dignity and creativity worthy of its historic past and its contribution to human civilization comes through the creation of another two, or three, new cities. Thus we can recover the concept and forms of the city, in an area where cities first acquired their meaning and form.