A Very Short History of Thessaloniki
Thessaloniki is the capital of Macedonia and second largest city of Greece. It was first established in 316 B.C. by Kassandros and named after his wife, Thessaloniki, half sister of Alexander the Great. It means Victory in Thessaly. It is here that the Apostle Paul first brought the message of Christianity (50 A.D.) and that Demetrius, a Roman officer died in martyrdom
(303 A.D.), thus becoming the holy patron of the city.
Thessaloniki was the second most important city of the Byzantine Empire, next to Constantinople, and is full of beautiful examples of Byzantine art and architecture. In the 15th Century Thessaloniki became a haven for Jews exiled from Spain, who became an important part of the culture, until they were sent to the concentration camps during the Nazi occupation, thus ending a period of four hundred years of Jewish influence both socially and economically. This period roughly corresponds with the occupation of Greece by the Ottoman Turks. See A Short history of the Jews in Greece.
It became a part of the modern state of Greece in 1913, but burned in 1917 creating a homeless population of 70,000. Add to this mix the influx of refugees from Asia minor after the ‘population exchange treaty’ signed in Lausanne in 1923 between Turkey, Greece and her former allies who abandened Greece after their defeat in Asia Minor, and you have the makings of a social revolution which took the form of Rembetika music. To this day some of Greece’s the most creative musicians including Savopoulos, Tsitsanis and Papazoglou, come from Thessaloniki.
Most people seem to arrive on tour buses which can be arranged by any travel agency. For those using