In Antiquity, the city was known as Hypate (Ὑπάτη) or Hypata (Ὑπάτα), probably a corruption of hypo Oita (ὑπὸ Οἴτα, meaning "near the Mount Oeta").

[4] In 168 BC, Rome re-established the koinon of the Aenianes as an autonomous polity, with its own eponymous magistrates and coins; Hypata became again its capital, and entered a period of renewed prosperity.

[10] They also began to participate in wider provincial politics under Domitian, when a Cyllus was manager of the Amphictyonic League at Delphi and received Roman citizenship.

[10] A daughter of the family, Flavia Habroea, who may have a cameo at the beginning of Lucian's Lucius or the Ass, married Marcus Ulpius Leurus, a fellow Thessalian and a Roman consul.

[10] The city is still mentioned in the 6th century under its ancient name by Procopius, who recorded repairs to its walls by Emperor Justinian I, and in the Synecdemus.

Coming briefly under Latin rule after the Fourth Crusade, the city was recovered by the ruler of Epirus, Theodore Komnenos Doukas, in 1218.

[citation needed] The worst blow came on 17 June 1944, when the Germans surrounded the town as part of reprisals for attacks by EAM-ELAS partisans based in the region.

A memorial in the town centre commemorates the event and Ypati has been declared a "martyr city" by the Greek state.

[18] The Greek menologium commemorates, on 28 March, Saint Herodion, traditionally held to be one of 70 disciples mentioned in the Gospel (whom the Apostle Paul of Tarsus calls a relative in Epistle to the Romans, ch.16, v.11) as first bishop of Neopatras.

900, listed in the Notitia Episcopatuum attributed to the Byzantine emperor Leo VI (r. 886–912), as the penultimate metropolitan see under the Patriarchate of Constantinople with one suffragan see, the Diocese of Marmaritzana.

[19][20] A 10th-century seal holds the name of archbishop Cosmas,[21] while the Metropolitan Nicholas signed a synodal decree from Patriarch Sisinius II of Constantinople around 997.

The see was suppressed after the Greek reconquest, but restored when the Catalans established the Duchy of Neopatras in 1319, and remained active until the Ottoman conquest at the turn of the 15th century.

[citation needed] The municipal unit of Ypati is subdivided into the following communities (constituent villages in brackets) :[2] When visited by William Martin Leake in the 19th century, there are still considerable remains of the ancient town.

In the metropolitan church he noticed a handsome shaft of white marble, and on the outside of the wall an inscription in small characters of the best times.

[22][23] The town is still dominated by its medieval castle, probably built in its present form in the 13th century, although the large round tower likely dates to the Catalan period.

[24] The town's old cathedral church, dedicated to Saint Nicholas, dates to the 18th century, but portions of a mosaic floor and reused architectural elements point to the existence, on the same location, of an early Christian basilica.

[18] Due to the proximity of Oeta, Ypati has also become a centre for excursions to the mountain, and is the starting point of several trekking paths.

[33][34] The monastery also houses the Oiti Natural History Museum, dedicated to the geology, climate, flora and fauna of Mount Oeta and its national park.