Following the trail of tobacco, as it unfolds through the depths of history across countries and continents, we arrive in Kavala of 1838 and 1853, landmark years that contributed to transforming the city from an insignificant Ottoman provincial town into an important exporting port of the Balkans.

Always guided by the trail of tobacco, we step into the city’s mayoral mansions and seek the story behind their walls: What was the powerful Hungarian-Jewish tobacco trading enterprise behind them, which dominated the city's export port for half a century through successive formations and names? Who were the families and individuals behind the business? And why did Jews dominate the tobacco trade across Europe?

As the trail of tobacco traverses periods of peace and war for over one hundred eighty years until today, we follow it through Greek and foreign literature, Greek and international press, narratives of protagonists, photographs, and paintings, to see Kavala synchronize with the international scene. It saddens us as we observe its inability to align the achievements of Greek tobacco workers with those of their European counterparts; it excites us as it unfolds the parallel lives of cities and countries around the world that shared with Kavala common hopes and struggles, prosperity and wealth, but also hardships and disappointments—the fate that tobacco brought to the city.

Today, the epic of tobacco and its bittersweet aroma, once filling the entire city, is a thing of the past. It survives only in the memory of the city and warrants the honor it deserves.