Thessaloniki is an ancient port-city that was founded in 316/315 BC (early Hellenistic period) by the ruler of Macedonia, Cassander. Located on the trade paths between the West and the East, Thessaloniki became the most important port of the Kingdom of Macedonia and managed to thrive for many centuries ahead. Today, Thessaloniki is a modern city of the Hellenic Republic and the European Union, with more than 1 million citizens in its metropolitan area. It is the second-largest city in Greece after Athens and the largest one in the geographical and historical region of Macedonia. Nationwide, Thessaloniki is considered the most lively and romantic city in the country, with its new generations being rather open-minded and outgoing, as they are breaking away from a more or less insular and conservative past.

The general shift of Thessaloniki towards a more extrovert city became more evident after 2010, resulting at the same time in a significant growth in the number of foreign visitors. More and more people started seeing the city not only as a stop-over destination between their flights via Airport “Makedonia” (SKG) but also as a main travel destination. The proximity of Chalkidiki, one of the most popular areas for summer vacations in Greece, the intense nightlife, the large-scale shopping streets and malls, and the exceptional cuisine, combined with the rich and diverse cultural heritage of the city (Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman, and Jewish), had already shaped an attractive and truly unique destination after all.

Thessaloniki is also known as a major educational center with several Universities, Technical Schools and other learning institutes within its limits. The central location of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH) – the largest Academic Institute in Greece and the Balkans – and the thousands of students that reside around it, have transformed the center of the city in one of the most lively urban areas in Europe.

The genuine character of Thessaloniki, however, is defined by its history, reflected even in its name which was inspired by a Macedonian princess. Thessaloniki (or Thessalonike) was the daughter of King Philip II and half-sister of Alexander the Great. The city was named after the princess by its founder Cassander (one of the rival successors of Alexander) to whom Thessaloniki was forced to be married. Her name meant “Thessalian Victory” and it was conceived by her father to commemorate the victory of the united Macedonian and Thessalian armies at the Battle of Crocus Field (353/352 BC) against the Phocians. It was the battle that established the dominance of the Ancient Kingdom of Macedonia under the rule of King Philip II.

For the foundation of Thessaloniki, Cassander chose the preexisting port-city of Therma and ordered the residents of 26 adjacent settlements to move in the area, expanding his new city towards the north. In these early years, during the Hellenistic era, Thessaloniki managed to grow fast and soon replaced the port of the capital, Pella, that was starting to silt up by the sediments of rivers that ran through the area. Today the ancient ruins of Pella lie 28km far from the sea of Thermaikos gulf.

The physical advantages of Thessaloniki’s port and its safe and strategic position made it ideal for the docking of the Macedonian warships and at the same time it favored the trade through the Aegean. Even after the fall of the Kingdom of Macedonia, in 168 BC, and the dominance of the Roman Republic, Thessaloniki continued to develop as a major trade hub on the axis of Via Egnatia, and in 148 BC it was proclaimed as the capital of the Roman Province of Macedonia.

Two centuries later, in 50/51 AD, Paul the Apostle visited the city during his second missionary journey and Thessaloniki became one of the first places where Christianity was preached – a religion that in the future would play a main role in the lives and the culture of the Thessalonians. In the meantime, however, the pagan and the imperial Roman Period of the city were far from ending.

Roman Thessaloniki reached its peak at the end of the 3rd and the beginning of the 4th century AD, when the most important Roman monuments of the city were built (the Galerius Palace, the Hippodrome, the Galerius Triumphal Arch and the Rotunda). It was a period marked by the divisions of the Roman Empire and Thessaloniki had become the administrative center of one of the empire’s autonomous sections under the rule of Galerius.

Less than a century later, however, in 390 AD, 7,000 civilians, mostly pagans, would be murdered in the Hippodrome lof the city, under the orders of Emperor Theodosius I. The atrocious act, known as the Massacre of Thessaloniki, was executed by the soldiers of a Germanic garrison of the Roman Army, following a rebellion against them that resulted in the death of their commander.

After the Fall of Rome in the 5th century AD, the spread of Christianity, and the rise of the Byzantine Empire (then referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire that mostly included the Greek-speaking Orthodox areas of the Roman World) Thessaloniki retained its prosperity and at the same time became an artistic and religious center of the Greek Orthodox Christians, coming second in importance, wealth, and population only to the capital, Constantinople.

Thessaloniki, remained at that status (although it went through several sieges, sackings, and temporary conquests) until it was definitively conquered by the Ottomans in 1430 AD, a year marking the end of the prosperous Byzantine Period of the city, that lasted for more than a 1,000 years. During this long historical span, some of the most important monuments of the city were created, which are nowadays inscribed in the World Heritage List of UNESCO as genuinely representative and unique examples of the Byzantine Culture.

Following the conquest of Thessaloniki by the Ottomans in 1430 (seven years after the Byzantine authorities had ceded the city to the Venetians, hoping that they would defend it effectively from the looming Ottoman threat), many of the Greeks who had survived abandoned the city, while many others had already left before the siege leaving an almost empty city. Subsequently, Sultan Murad II, the conqueror of Thessaloniki, aimed at growing again the population of his new acquisition by ordering several Muslims of different origin (Turkish, Bulgarian and Albanian) to move in. This policy was continued for decades and Thessaloniki was also migrated by Ashkenazim Jews from Central Europe and mostly by Serphadim Jews from Spain and other countries after 1492.

As a result, the multicultural character of Thessaloniki became more evident than ever and its overall physiognomy changed drastically. Most of the Byzantine churches were converted into mosques while minarets, hammams, and other Ottoman buildings were erected all over the city along with new fortifications or additions to the existing ones (the White Tower, the Alysseos Tower, the Vardaris Fort and the additions to the Acropolis Fortress, also known as Heptapyrgion or Yedi Kule).

At the same time, the Jewish population of Thessaloniki kept growing and at the beginning of the 16th century, it had risen to 15,715, more than half (54%) of the city’s population at the time and one of the largest Jewish communities in Europe. Thessaloniki became the only city in the continent where the Jews were a majority and for that reason, it was given the name “Mother of Israel” and “Jerusalem of the Balkans”. A city that before the immigration of the Ashkenazim and Sephardim was also home to the Romaniote Jews, a Greek-speaking and one the oldest communities of the Jewish diaspora since the Hellenistic years (it was in their synagogue that in 50/51 AD, Paul the Apostle preached about Christ).

During the five centuries that Thessaloniki was under Ottoman rule, Christians, Jews, and Muslims of various origins, together with other smaller minorities and foreigners from Europe, were living in their own neighborhoods, without any serious rivalries among them. Most of the Muslims were living in Ano Poli (Upper Town), the Christians close to the Galerian complex and their few remaining churches, and the Jews below Egnatia Avenue, close to the sea wall and the port. Today, on Apostolou Pavlou Street, south-east of Ano Poli, there is the museum of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey, who was born in 1881 and lived in Thessaloniki and in its wider area during his early life.

The Ottoman ruling of Thessaloniki ended on October 26, 1912, when Tahsin Pasha surrendered the city to the Greek Army, that was led by the Crown Prince Constantine during the First Balkan War. A year later Thessaloniki was officially incorporated into the Greek State. At that time, it was inhabited by 61,439 Jews (39%), 45,889 Muslims (29%), 39,956 Greeks (25%), 6,263 Bulgarians (4%), 2,721 Roma (2%) and 1,621 (1%) citizens of other origins (Greek Government Census of 1913).

Tragically, a few years later, in 1917, the biggest part of the city’s historic center was destroyed by the Great Fire of Thessaloniki, leaving homeless more than 72,500 people, of which approximately 50,000 were Jews. After the fire, the Greek government decided to implement a new plan for Thessaloniki, according to the European standards of the time – a decision that signified a vast revitalization and modernization of the old urban structures, marking a new era for the city. The task was given to the French architect, urban planner, and archaeologist Ernest Hébrard.

His plan aimed at the creation of a modern city center with commercial functions, designed with boulevards and contemporary roads, big squares, and parks. At the same time, the new plan would give prominence to the Byzantine and the Roman monuments without trying to reconstruct the oriental features of the city that had been built during the Ottoman period. Although the new plan wasn’t implemented in full, the former residential neighborhoods of the city center had to be relocated, and those who had lost their homes in the fire would have to move to less central areas of the city facing an additional misfortune. As a result, many of the city’s Jews, although financially compensated, chose to migrate.

The next challenge that Thessaloniki had to face, related again with human suffering, was the population exchange between Greece and Turkey that took place in 1923 and 1924 after the Greek Army was defeated in the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922) and the migration that had already started before the official exchange. The Muslims of Thessaloniki had to migrate to Turkey and approximately 160,000 Greek refugees and migrants mainly from Asia Minor, Eastern Thrace, Pontus and Caucasus, moved in the city, most of them in new, shanty settlements, living for many years in conditions of extreme poverty.

However, the tragic events in the recent history of Thessaloniki hadn’t come to an end yet. In March 1943, after two years of German occupation during World War II, and after the Jews of the city were forced to live in a ghetto by the Railway Station, approximately 45,000-50,000 people, up to 95% of the city’s Jewish population, were put into trains by the Nazis and were deported to the concentration and extermination camp of Auschwitz II-Birkenau and other camps in Poland and Germany. Most of them were murdered in the gas chambers as soon as they arrived. It is estimated that only 4% of the deported Jews from Thessaloniki survived and even fewer returned. Nowadays, in the city there are approximately 1,000 Jews.

After World War II, despite the tragic human losses and the disasters that the city faced at the first half of the 20th century, Thessaloniki managed to grow and to be modernized, although sometimes in a rushed, disconnected with the past, and inconsistent manner, becoming a contemporary city of the European Union, that is constantly struggling to evolve.