History and Mission

Historical & Literary Archives of Kavala was founded in 1996 by Nikolaos, Victor and Panagiota Roudometof, in order to organize the personal collection of Nikolaos Roudometof, president of HLAK until his death, in 2017. At that time, operational expenses were covered by the founders and rarely by local government or similar entities who supported particular events.

After the death of HLAK founder, we are focusing on the following objectives:

  • The maintenance, organization, classification and preservation of the deceased founder's archival collection,
  • The promotion of the scientific research, regarding the region of Kavala, the wider region of Macedonia and Thrace and the Balkans,
  • The maintenance, classification, preservation and use of the photographic and pictorial material and
  • The development of collaborations with academic and research institutes, in Greece and abroad, aiming to ensure the rescue of the archives in the long term.

Since March 2018, Managing Director of HLAK is the son of Nikolaos, Victor Roudometof.


Resume of Nikolaos V. Roudometof (1933 - 2017)

Nikolaos V. Roudometof was born in Kavala on 28th of July, 1933. His parents were Victor Roudometof, surveying engineer, Russian immigrant and Angela Nisem. Nikolaos Roudometof completed his studies in Kavala after World War II, german occupation and civil war and continued his studies in West Germany. In 1957, he stopped his studies and returned to Kavala for family reasons, where he became active in the construction sector. He founded and managed until 1982 the ROUDOMETOF SA construction company. He built buildings in the city of Kavala, Nea Iraklitsa and Nea Peramos and literally linked his name with the urban expansion of Kavala. After the end of his building activity, he successfully directed the company "Roudometof - Art & Color". In 1963, he married Panagiota Kalpinis (Grigoriadou) and in 1964 his son Victor was born. Nikolaos Roudometof was an active member of Rotary network, co-founder and President of West Kavala's Group, Paul Harris Fellow and Assistant Governor of 248th Rotary District. Both on a personal level as well as through Rotary and similar organizations, he carried out extensive charity work, such as his participation in sending supplies to the greek community of North Epirus in the early 1990s, as well as the economic support of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Konstaninoupolis.

He was also an important collector and writer and/or curator of other's works, as well as a person with great public presence in the intellectual life of the city of Kavala (you can find related videos in the particular section in HLAK website). The first archives are dated in 1959, although the systematic work of collecting and rescuing historical evidence began in 1965. It has to be noted that he was also a fanatic collector of natural stones, stamps, coins, books, maps, postcards, CDs & DVDs for many decades. With his retirement in 1997, he decided to establish the Historical & Literary Archive of Kavala (HLAK) as a non-profit civil organization. He served as President of HLAK until his death on October 27, 2017.

Through HLAK, Nikolaos V. Roudometof published a series of books, conferences papers and other significant documents, between 1997 and 2017. His first attempt to write a book was in 1991, when he published the one about local coins of the late ottoman period, although one of the first works published by HLAK concerns the Codex of the Kavala's Elders the years 1895 - 1908. Due to many publicalions, there is a detailed presentation of them in this website. Moreover, since the 80's, Nikolaos Roudometof wrote a number of presentations and publications. He participated in many Greek and international conferences where he presented aspects of the local history of Eastern Macedonia and Thrace, focusing on the cities of Drama, Kavala and Xanthi.

Special mention should be made for the three Balkan and local history conferences, which were organized by HLAK (2001, 2005 and 2010). Documents of them were handled personally by Nikolaos Roudometof and are available through HLAK. In these published documents of the conferences include papers of dozens of Greek and foreign academics and researchers. Also, very important is the multi-volume work of "Bulgarian Occupation Books", which is an important source for the local history of the 20th century. Particularly, it should be mentioned that HLAK has significant co-operations with greek and foreign universities (AUTH, DUTH, University of Cyprus etc.) and institutes. His work, both on a personal level and through HLAK, has been the subject of public praise. Municipality of Kavala honored him after death (24/11/2017), while praises were also given by the Society of Macedonian Studies and other institutes.