Thessaloniki

The historic city:

The ancient antique city of Thessaloniki houses a variety of sights; there are a number of interesting museums, but also buildings, churches, mosques and (Roman) archaeological sites. Firstly there are the old city walls or defensive walls of the city, Eptapyrgio, which have unfortunately largely crumbled. The most prominent building and also the symbol of the city is the "white tower" (Lefkos Pyrgos).

This 15th century tower is located directly on the boulevard and was used in the 18th century as a prison for disobedient Christian boys who had been converted to violence and who had to serve as servants for the sultan. Later these were all slaughtered in the same tower that came to be known as "bloody tower". Another important place is the "Roman Agora" - the old market square.

The site is still undergoing archaeological research. Furthermore, there is the arch of Galerius - a triumphal arch in honor of Emperor Galerius on the Persians. Originally the complex consisted of a hippodrome, a tomb, the arch and a palace. The largest church in Greece is Agios Dimitrios (Demetrios): a church of 55 x 33 meters. Finally you can take a look at the rotonda tomb, which is a building with more than 6 meters thick walls, a dome of 25 meters in diameter with a minaret and an interior decorated with mosaics. In the year 400 this building became a Christian church. In 1591 a mosque was made and nowadays it is used as a museum. 

Other attractions:

• The Archaeological museum, the birth-house of Ataturk and Modiano (the covered market).

Thessaloniki is approximately founded in the year 315 BC by Kassandros who named the place after his wife Thessalonikè, a half-sister of Alexander the Great, who in turn was named by her father Philip II of Macedonia for the victory (nikè) he had achieved in Thessaly. Around 50 AD the apostle Paul preached here. The city was very important during the Hellenistic period, when the empires of the diadas stretched to India.

Later it became part of the Roman Empire (Galerius had his residence here), the Byzantine Empire, the crusader kingdom of Thessaloniki during the Fourth Crusade in 1204, and the Ottoman Empire. Troubled times were when the Goths, the Avars, the Slavs, the Saracens and even the Normans (1185) were here and conquered and destroyed the city. The conquest of the city by the Ottoman Turks, in connection with Murad II in 1430, led to a gradual change in the composition of the population of Thessaloniki.

From 1500, many Sephardic Jews settled in the city, refugees for the persecution of the faith in Spain. For a long time they would even constitute the majority of the population, making Thessaloniki one of the largest Jewish centers in the world. At the beginning of the 20th century the city had about 160,000 inhabitants, of which approximately 60,000 Jews, 45,000 Turks and 40,000 Greeks. The city was a very multicultural community. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey, was born in Thessaloniki. The Young Turks revolution of 1908 against the sultan's regime also began in this city. 

During the First Balkan War, on 26 October 1912 Thessaloniki was conquered by the Greek army. Although Bulgaria also claimed the city, it would definitely become part of Greece in 1913. In 1917 a big fire raged in the city, causing three-quarters of the city center to be destroyed and many Ottoman buildings lost. The center has been rebuilt according to the plans of the French architect Ernest Hebrard. As a result of the population exchange between Turkey and Greece, the population composition of the city changed drastically. Since the exchange, the Greeks form the majority of the population of the city. From August 1922, when Greek troops withdrew from Turkey, thousands of Greek refugees from Asia Minor settled in Thessaloniki, while most Muslims (Turks and Dönmes, Islam-converted Jews) were forced to leave the city.

A pogrom in 1931 then drove the last Muslims and a large part of the Jews out of the city. Almost all remaining Jews were deported to concentration camps by the Nazis during the Second World War and murdered. Only a small number of the remaining 40,000 Jews returned to the city. Currently there are still around 2,000 Jews living in the city. In 1978, an earthquake caused considerable damage to the city.