Thessaloniki: the city most visitors to Greece never see

There is a phrase Thessalonians repeat with a mixture of pride and resignation: “We are the second city of Greece, but the first in everything else.” Food, music, university life, Byzantine architecture, the character of the people: in each of these areas, a widespread Greek conviction holds that Thessaloniki surpasses Athens. It is a conviction Athenians do not share, but that is beside the point.

What is objectively true is that Thessaloniki is the Greek city with the densest history per square kilometre, and the least visited in proportion to what it holds. Most travellers to Greece never reach the north of the country. Those who do reach Thessaloniki tend to spend two days and leave convinced they should have stayed a week.

The founding and early centuries

Thessaloniki was founded in 315 BC by Cassander, one of Alexander the Great’s successors. Cassander named it after his wife, Thessalonike, who was Alexander’s half-sister. This genealogical detail is not incidental: Thessaloniki was born with dynastic ambitions, designed from the outset to be important.

Importance arrived quickly. In the Roman period, Thessaloniki was the capital of the province of Macedonia and the central node of the Via Egnatia, the road linking the Adriatic coast with Byzantium. Saint Paul preached in Thessaloniki in around 50 AD and wrote the two Epistles to the Thessalonians — the earliest letters in the New Testament in chronological order. The city already had a substantial Jewish community, with which Paul came into conflict before being expelled.

Galerius, the co-emperor who governed the eastern Roman Empire at the turn of the fourth century, chose Thessaloniki as his capital. The two structures he left are extraordinary and still stand in the urban centre. The Arch of Galerius, built around 305 AD to celebrate his victory over the Sassanid Persians, has relief panels narrating the campaigns with a detail comparable to Trajan’s Column in Rome. The Rotunda, originally built as his personal mausoleum, is a concrete drum with walls nearly six metres thick. It was converted into a church by Constantine I, transformed into a mosque by the Ottomans (the Ottoman minaret still stands at one side), and is today a monument serving as museum and concert hall. The acoustics, designed originally for a funerary space, are remarkable.

The Byzantine inheritance

The UNESCO designation Thessaloniki received in 1988 — the Palaeochristian and Byzantine Monuments of Thessaloniki — includes fifteen distinct monuments. It is one of the most generous designations in terms of number of elements, and it is justified. Thessaloniki was the second city of the Eastern Roman Empire for most of its history, meaning it received monumental investment from emperors who wanted to leave their mark on the most important city in the world that was not Constantinople.

The Basilica of Saint Demetrius, from the fifth century, preserves Palaeochristian mosaics on the interior columns, including portraits of historical figures with the saint that are of exceptional quality and conservation. The Church of Agios Giorgios — the Rotunda reconverted — has fourth-century mosaics in the dome that are the oldest in Thessaloniki. The Church of Holy Wisdom (Hagia Sophia in Thessaloniki, prior to the one in Constantinople in name and certain typological respects) dates from the eighth century.

Gastronomy as history

Thessaloniki’s gastronomic reputation has a precise historical root. In 1922-23, the exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey following Greece’s defeat in Asia Minor brought to Thessaloniki — which lay just hours by sea from Smyrna and the Anatolian coast — hundreds of thousands of Greek refugees from Turkey. These families brought with them recipes, culinary techniques and a gastronomic tradition developed over generations in cosmopolitan eastern Mediterranean cities.

The result is a cuisine combining the Greek Orthodox base — olive oil, lamb, cheeses — with Anatolian, Ottoman and Sephardic Jewish influences. Bougatsa — filo pastry with custard cream or cheese, dusted with icing sugar and cinnamon — was not invented in Thessaloniki, but here it was elevated to the status of obligatory breakfast. The establishments that serve only bougatsa open at five in the morning and use nothing but same-day fresh ingredients.

The Upper Town and recent history

Ano Poli, the upper town of Thessaloniki, climbs the slopes of Mount Chortiatis preserving the timber architecture of the Ottoman period. Houses with overhanging upper floors, interior courtyards, steep cobbled streets: this is the only neighbourhood of Thessaloniki that survived the great fire of 1917, which destroyed 70% of the lower city. From the viewpoint above the Byzantine walls that crown the neighbourhood, the view over the city and the Thermaic Gulf, with Mount Olympus visible on clear days, is the best perspective Thessaloniki offers.

The Sephardic Jewish community, which had been the majority of the city’s population until the nineteenth century — Thessaloniki was once called “La madre de Israel” for being the most important Sephardic community in the world — was deported in 1943. Forty-eight thousand people were transported from the grounds of the old trade fair directly to Auschwitz. Roughly two thousand survived. The Jewish Museum on Agiou Mina Street, small and well designed, is where that history is told without euphemism.

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