The name is preserved from antiquity and is derived from the Greek χαλκός (copper, bronze), though there is no trace of any mines in the area.

In the 8th and 7th centuries BC, colonists from Chalcis founded thirty townships on the peninsula of Chalcidice and several important cities in Magna Graecia and Sicily, such as Naxos, Rhegion, Zankle and Cumae.

Its mineral produces, metal-work, purple, and pottery not only found markets among these settlements but were distributed over the Mediterranean in the ships of Corinth and Samos.

The first recorded settlement in the West, which paved the way for the 2nd Greek colonization, is Pithecusae on the island of Ischia, in front of Naples, from Chalcidians and Eretrians around 770 BC.

In the 8th century BC the increase in trade between the Chalkidian colonies in lower Italy and Sicily with the local populations resulted in the spread of the Chalkidic alphabet among the most ancient inhabitants of the peninsula.

The historical sources provide evidence for only one battle of the war, undoubtedly the last, with the reference point being the death of the Thessalian Amphidamandas, who was praised by Hesiod.

In this battle the help from the Thessalian cavalry resulted in victory for Chalkida, by which it acquired the best agricultural district of Euboea and became the chief city of the island.

Late in the 6th century BC, its prosperity was broken by a disastrous war with the Athenians, who expelled the ruling aristocracy and settled a cleruchy on the site.

[5] Chalkis has had a Greco-Jewish presence since antiquity, which is sometimes claimed to have been continuous and to thus form Europe's oldest Jewish community,[8] although there is no evidence of it through the early Middle Ages.

A large hoard of late medieval jewellery dating from Venetian times was found in Chalcis Castle in the nineteenth century and is now in the British Museum.

[13] Negroponte played a significant role in the history of Frankish Greece, and was attacked by the Principality of Achaea in the War of the Euboeote Succession (1257/8), the Catalan Company in 1317, the Turks in 1350/1, until it was finally captured by the Ottoman Empire after a long siege in 1470.

The modern town received an impetus in its export trade from the establishment of railway connection with Athens and its port Piraeus in 1904.

In the early 20th century it was composed of two parts—the old walled town at the bridge over the Euripus, where a number of Turkish families continued to live until the late 19th century, and a sizeable Jewish community lived until World War II, and the more modern suburb that lies outside it, chiefly occupied by Greeks.

[5] The old town, called the Castro (citadel), was surrounded by a full circuit of defense walls until they were completely razed for urban development around the start of the 20th century.

[17] The Byzantine diocese of Chalkis was initially a suffragan of the Archdiocese of Corinth, but in the 9th century was transferred to the Metropolitan of Athens, remaining in the sway of the Patriarchate of Constantinople.

[20][21] The central arch over the iconostasis and the ceiling and walls of the south chapel are the best examples of Italian Gothic stone-carving in Greece.