Agios Germanos,, is a village in the Prespes Municipality in West Macedonia, Greece. Agios Germanos is located at an altitude of approximately 1,100 meters, on a hillside, part of the Varnoundas Mountains. It is from the Prespes lakes, which can be seen from a panorama location of the village. Agios Germanos lies from Florina, and from Kastoria.
Name
Until 1926, the village was known as German. In the Macedonian language, it is known as Герман, German and the name of the settlement comes from the old village church Sveti German. The modern Greek name Agios Germanos means "Saint Germanus".
Features
The village is the only village in the Prespes region that has preserved all of the old stone houses. The Byzantine church that forms the nucleus of the present village dates to the beginning of the 11th century. It has very interesting frescos painted in three different phases. Nearby, the church of Agios Athanasios was built at the end of the 18th century. The village is especially known among tourists for hiking, bird watching and the Agios Germanos river with falls, which has the endangered species of the Salmo trutta peristericus trout. Agios Germanos river is on the northeast of the village. One can also see the restored water mills along the river. Following the paths, one can reach the impressive mixed fir-beech forests, and the summits of Kitsevo or Despotiko. The Sarakatsani, nomadic shepherds from Thessaly, have the tradition of bringing their herds to graze on these mountains every year from May to October. Just north of the village is an early 20th-century church built by Steven Doinidis. This church is kept up by the villagers, who number just over 200 as of 2008.
Demographics
According to Bosnian ethnographer Stefan Verković, in 1889 the village had 213 households and a population of 1016 Bulgarians. In 1905 the population had gone down to 1250 with 90 of them being Arnauts and the rest – Bulgarians. In the early 1900s, 680 Slavonic speaking Christians and 125 Muslim Albanians lived in the village. The present day village has some 20 Christian Macedonian-speaking families. The village also had a separate neighbourhood Shaoftsi that was inhabited by Muslims and later repopulated by prosfiges after the Population exchange between Greece and Turkey. Today, the village has a mixed population of Macedonian-speaking Slavophones, Aromanians and Pontic Greeks.
