Qeparo
| Qeparo | |
|---|---|
| Village | |
Qeparo village and the bay on the Ionian Sea
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 Qeparo
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| Coordinates: 40°3′9″N 19°49′45″E / 40.05250°N 19.82917°ECoordinates: 40°3′9″N 19°49′45″E / 40.05250°N 19.82917°E | |
| Country |
 Albania
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| County | Vlorë |
| Municipality | Himarë |
| Administrative Unit | Himarë |
| Elevation | 450 m (1,480 ft) |
| Time zone | CET (UTC+1) |
| • Summer (DST) | CEST (UTC+2) |
Qeparo (Greek: Κηπαρό, Kiparo) is a seaside village on the Albanian Riviera in Vlorë County, Albania. It is part of the municipality Himarë. It is divided in two parts - the old and new villages.
According to 19th century topographer William Martin Leake, the original name of the village was Kiepero or Kiparos, which derives from the Greek word kipos, meaning garden.
In antiquity, the area of Qeparo, like the rest of the Himara region, was inhabited by the Greek tribe of the Chaonians.
In 1720, the villages of Himara, Palasa, Ilias, Vuno, Pilur and Qeparo refused to submit to the Pasha of Delvina.
The village has an Orthodox Church dedicated to Saint Demetrius, dated 1760, one of the nine churches in Albania dedicated to that saint. A project for the establishment of a Greek school in the village was initiated by the Greek national benefactors Evangelos and Konstantinos Zappas in 1860. In the 1898-1899 school season three Greek schools were operating in Qeparo: elementary, secondary and a girls' school with a total of 100 students.
During the period of the Balkan Wars, the inhabitants of Greek-speaking villages in the region, such as Qeparo, fought against Albanian speaking-villages, who fought on the side of the Ottoman Empire. At November 5, 1912, when the nearby town of Himara was controlled by the Greek forces of the local major Spyros Spyromilios, armed groups from Qeparo declared that they were prepared to assist his movement for the incorporation of the rest of the region into Greece.
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Wikipedia