THE BYZANTINE MONUMENTS OF THESSALONIKI IN 20 OLD & RARE PICTURES

Between the 19th and the early 20th century AD, Thessaloniki was a fascinating destination for many European expeditions to the East. During those years, the city was documented by many foreign explorers, scholars, diplomats, and even by military forces of WWI. The oldest photograph of Thessaloniki, that is known today, was taken in 1863 by the Hungarian photographer Joseph Székely, while earlier pictures of the city and its landmarks exist mostly in the form of engravings and lithographs created by artists, travel writers, architects, and archaeologists such as the French Pierre Langlumé and Charles Texier, the British Mary Adelaide Walker, and others.

In this post, you can see some of the oldest images that can be found in the public domain* depicting the Byzantine monuments of Thessaloniki in the decade of 1910s or earlier. Back then, the Ottoman character of the city was still dominant (Thessaloniki was under Ottoman rule between 1430 and 1912) and most of the churches had minarets that were built after their conversion into mosques. Many decades later, in 1988, “The Paleochristian and Byzantine Monuments of Thessalonika”, were inscribed in the World Heritage List of UNESCO (Ref: 456). You can read and see more about the Byzantine legacy of Thessaloniki here.