Thessaloniki is the second largest city in Greece with a population of one million people.
The city was founded in 315 BC by Kassandros, the son of the general Antipatros, who united 26 settlements in the greater area. Kassandros was appointed the prefect of Macedonia by Alexander the Great before his expedition to Asia. ‘Thessaloniki’ was named after Kassandros’ wife, the step-sister of Alexander the Great.
In 168 BC Thessaloniki fell to the Romans and became the capital of the province of Macedonia. Almost half a century before the birth of Christ, the famous Roman orator Cicero lived in the city, while Paul of Tarsus’ First Epistle to the Thessalonians mentioned the presence of hellenised Jews in the city around 52 AD.
In 306 AD, Thessaloniki acquired its patron saint, St Demetrius, who as the Roman Proconsul in the area under the anti-Christian emperor Maximilian, was credited with a number of miracles which saved the city from various invaders throughout its history. Demetrius was tortured and killed in a Roman prison where the church first built in 463 AD and dedicated to him stands today, along with other important remains from this period in the wider area, including the Arch and Tomb of Galerius, which is located in the city centre of modern Thessaloniki.
The city’s ideal location on the Thermaic Gulf and the east-west Via Egnatia (the most important road in ancient Rome), together with its proximity to the Axios river valley corridor that connects Greece with the Balkan hinterland, saw the city become a leading commercial centre.
Constantine the Great chose Thessaloniki to engage in the great confrontation with Licinius, his rival for imperial power, in the early 4th century AD. Constantine built a new port and recognized Christianity as the official religion of the state. It was from that period onwards that Thessaloniki acquired important Byzantine churches, which visitors are able to see to this day during their walks through the city.
In the following centuries, Thessaloniki suffered from raids by the Goths, Persians, Arabs, Crusaders and Turks without ever losing its character – the city saved by its great walls, part of which still stand today.
Regardless of the threats and invasions, Thessaloniki culturally flourished for centuries and after the capital, Constantinople, became the second most important city in the Byzantine Empire. The city greatly contributed to the ‘creation’ of South-Eastern Europe with the missionary work of her 9th-century monks Cyril and Methodius (inventors of the precursor to the Cyrillic alphabet), who expanded Orthodox Byzantine literary culture amongst the Balkan Slavs.
In the year 1185 the Byzantine Empire could not prevent the occupation of Thessaloniki by the Normans, later came the Franks and in 1224, the city was occupied by Theodoros Doukas Komnenos and declared the Bishop of Epirus’ capital.
Thessaloniki faced the threat of the Catalans and from 1300 entered a new golden age of a singular autonomy and self-government. There was a strong economy, cultural and artistic life, brilliant monuments, skilfully decorated churches, factories for copper, iron, lead and paper. The city’s renaissance was supported by a series of well-known orators, theologians, philosophers, lawyers and hagiographers. Grigorios Palamas, the lawyer Constantine Armenopoulos, Thomas Magistros and the hagiographer Emmanuel Panselinos were all in Thessaloniki creating their great works.
In 1430, Thessaloniki was captured by the Ottomans, but continued to be a major city and in 1478, Thessaloniki had a population of more than 4,000 Muslims, 6,000 Greek Orthodox inhabitants and a major Jewish community, mostly of Sephardic origin, following their expulsion from Spain in 1492. By the end of the 19th century Thessaloniki gained a rail link with Skopje and from there the rest of Europe including present day Alexandroupolis and Constantinople.
The first horse-drawn trams, industries and gaslight were also established during 19th and early 20th centuries, with the city becoming one of the cultural and political centres not only of the Greek but also of the Bulgarian revival movement.
Sephardic Jews, Greek Orthodox and Muslims remained the principal demographic groups in Thessaloniki until the early 20th century – the city was often called ‘Mother of Israel’ because of its more than 60,000 strong Sephardic Jews (almost half the city’s population). Unfortunately the Jewish community was almost entirely exterminated by the Nazis in 1943 – today, fewer than 2000 Jewish people live in the city.
The 1917 great fire of Thessaloniki destroyed most of the city and left 70,000 homeless. A few years later, following the 1922 Asia Minor catastrophe and population exchange with Turkey, the city became home to a substantial number of Greek refugees from the Turkish mainland, who eventually contributed to the economic and social development of the city in the decades to follow. More recently, on the 20 June 1978, Thessaloniki was hit by a major earthquake (6.5 Richter Scale ) where 50 people lost their lives.
Historically Thessaloniki is the birth place of the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, and the Young Turk revolution of 1908, which proclaimed a constitutional monarchy over the Ottoman Empire. Thessaloniki was also the headquarters of the multinational labour movement Socialist Workers’ Federation led by Avraam Benaroya, a Jewish activist from Bulgaria, who was one of the co-founders of the Greek Council of Labour Unions and the Greek Communist Party.
On 26 October 1912, Thessaloniki was finally liberated by the Greek army and united with Greece after almost five centuries of Ottoman occupation, exactly one hundred and one years ago this week, celebrated on the same day as its protector St Demetrius. On the 19th March 1984, Thessaloniki became the sister-city to Melbourne, which hosts one of the largest Greek-speaking populations outside of Greece.