Thessaloniki

Thessaloniki was founded in 315 BC by Cassander of Macedon, who named it after his wife Thessalonike, a daughter of Philip II and sister of Alexander the Great. Around AD 50 the apostle Paul preached in its chief synagogue and founded one of the early Christian churches, to which he later wrote the two letters to the Thessalonians. When the Roman Empire was divided under the tetrarchy, Galerius made the city his capital and built a palace, a hippodrome, a triumphal arch and the mausoleum now called the Rotunda. Under Byzantium it became the empire's second city after Constantinople, with perhaps 150,000 people in the 12th century; in 1342 sailors and the poor seized power in the revolt known as the Commune of the Zealots.

Sultan Murad II captured and sacked the city in 1430. After Spain expelled its Jews in 1492, some 20,000 Sephardic Jews settled here, and by 1519 they made up more than half the population; for four centuries Salonica was a trading port of churches, mosques and synagogues side by side. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk was born here in 1881. On 8 November 1912, the feast of St Demetrius, the Ottoman garrison surrendered to the Greek army.

On 18 August 1917 an unattended kitchen fire started the Great Fire, which destroyed most of the old centre; the city was rebuilt on a new plan around Aristotelous Square. After 1922 more than 160,000 refugees from Asia Minor and Eastern Thrace were settled here, while about 20,000 Muslims were deported to Turkey. In 1943 the German occupiers forced the Jews into a ghetto and, from 15 March, deported them; of the 45,000 sent to Auschwitz, only 4 per cent survived. The airport was expanded in 2021, and the long-delayed metro opened in November 2024.

Greeks call Thessaloniki the Symprotevousa, the co-capital, a title inherited from its Byzantine role as the city that reigned alongside Constantinople. Its monuments record every layer of that past: fifteen Paleochristian and Byzantine buildings were inscribed together on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1988, and Roman, Ottoman and Sephardic buildings stand among the post-fire apartment blocks. The Upper Town has long been the quarter of poets, intellectuals and bohemians.

It is a festival and student city. Aristotle University is the largest in Greece and the Balkans, and the student population keeps the cafés and bars of the centre busy late into the night. The International Fair in early September, where the Prime Minister sets out the year's economic policy, and the film festival in November are the main events of the calendar, and the city was European Youth Capital in 2014. Football loyalties divide between PAOK, founded by refugees from Constantinople, and Aris.

Memory matters here. The refugees of the 1920s shaped whole districts, such as Kalamaria, and their music and cooking. The destruction of the Jewish community is remembered on the anniversary of the first deportation in March; in 2026 hundreds marched through the streets under the sign "Never Again". Residents pride themselves on a slower, more sociable style than Athens, built around long meals and the evening walk along the seafront.

The municipality of Thessaloniki, the historical centre, had about 320,000 people at the 2021 census, and the metropolitan area about one million — a dense city of apartment blocks curving round the gulf, with suburbs such as Kalamaria, Neapoli-Sykies, Pavlos Melas and Pylaia making up much of the urban area.

The Port of Thessaloniki is one of the busiest cargo ports in Greece and the main sea gate of the Balkans, and the city is northern Greece's commercial and administrative centre. Food and drink companies such as the dairy firm Mevgal and Mythos Brewery are based here, and the Goody's fast-food chain started in the city. The universities, hospitals, trade fairs and tourism employ many more.

Daily rhythms follow the Greek pattern of late lunches and later dinners, with cafés full from morning to midnight. In the evening the seafront promenade fills with walkers, cyclists and families. The opening of the metro in 2024 and its extension to Kalamaria in 2026, after decades of delays caused by archaeological finds and the financial crisis, has changed how many people cross the centre.

Spices play a larger role in Thessaloniki's cooking than in southern Greece. Breakfast is bougatsa, a filo pastry most often filled with semolina custard, or savoury with cheese, a speciality that has spread across Greece and the Balkans, or a koulouri, a sesame bread ring eaten on the move. Refugees from Asia Minor brought soutzoukakia Smyrneika, spicy oblong meatballs with cumin and garlic served in tomato sauce. A long night out can end with patsas, tripe soup, widely regarded as a cure for a hangover.

Meze is the city's way of eating out, and Ladadika's tavernas are the busiest place for it. The covered Modiano Market and the Kapani market next to it sell fish, meat, olives and spices in the blocks off Aristotelous Square, and the tavernas and bars inside Modiano make it a social meeting place as well as a market.

The city is known for its sweets: trigona Panoramatos, filo triangles filled with cream, roxakia, kourkoubinia and Armenonville. Thessaloniki also gave Greece its summer drink: the frappé, iced instant coffee shaken with water, sugar and milk, was invented at the International Fair in 1957 by a Nescafé representative, Dimitris Vakondios. Mythos Brewery is based here, and tsipouro is drunk with meze.