The famous city of Beroia, with a history uninterrupted from antiquity to modern times, acquired particular importance as the frontiers of the medieval Greek state continued to shrink. In 1001 the emperor Basil II Bulgaroktonos (the Bulgar-Slayer) brought a brief Bulgarian occupation of the city to an end. Beroia faced further disturbance from foreign conquerors (Franks, Bulgars, Serbs) in the 13th and 14th centuries. In 1433 it was taken by the Turks.
The importance of Beroia in the closing years of Byzantium is evident in the place it occupied in the ecclesiastical hierarchy of the Patriarchate of Constantinople: an archiepiscopal see at the end of the 13th century, it became a metropolis in the early 14th. Forty-eight historic churches still survive in Beroia, of which 39 possess wall--paintings dating from the very beginning of the 13th to the 18th century.
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