A permanent underclass lives in shantytowns near the port, consisting of Pontic or Black Sea Greeks, Albanians and eastern European refugees, as well as a growing community of Afghans and Africans. Thessaloníki’s opulence has traditionally been epitomized by the locals’ sartorial elegance, but the boom of the 1990s is long gone and an increasing number of boarded-up shops indicate that Greece’s economic malaise has taken hold here. After the war more reconstruction was necessary to repair bomb damage, though this was interrupted in 1978 by a severe earthquake that damaged many older buildings. During World War II the city was occupied by the Nazis, who decimated the Jewish community. The city was rebuilt, often in a special form of Art Deco style, over the following eight years on a grid plan prepared under the supervision of French architect Ernest Hébrard, with long central avenues running parallel to the seafront and cross-streets densely planted with trees. The modern quality of Thessaloníki is due largely to a disastrous fire in 1917 which levelled most of the old plaster houses along a labyrinth of Ottoman lanes, including the entire Jewish quarter. Besides Ottoman Muslims, who called the city “Selanik”, there were Slavs (who still know it as “Solun”), Albanians, Armenians and, following the Iberian expulsions after 1492, the largest European Jewish community of the age. Its population was as varied as any in the region, with Greek Orthodox Christians in a distinct minority. Thessaloníki was the premier Ottoman Balkan city when Athens was still a backwater. It was, however, restored to the Byzantine Empire of Nicea in 1246, reaching a cultural “golden age” until Turkish conquest and occupation in 1430. The storming and sacking continued under the Normans of Sicily (1185) and with the Fourth Crusade (1204), when the city became for a time capital of the Latin Kingdom of Salonica. Under Justinian’s rule (527–65) Salonica became the second city of Byzantium after Constantinople, which it remained – under constant pressure from Goths and Slavs – until its sacking by Saracens in 904. The first resident Christian emperor was Theodosius (reigned 379–95), who after his conversion issued the Edict of Salonica, officially ending paganism. Galerius, who acceded as eastern emperor upon Byzantium’s break with Rome, provided the city with virtually all its surviving late Roman monuments. #GLIMPSES FIREWALKING NORTHERN GREECE FULL#It was another three centuries, however, before the new religion took full root. St Paul visited twice, and on the second occasion, in 56 AD, he stayed long enough to found a church, later writing the two Epistles to the Thessalonians, his congregation there. Its fortunes and significance were boosted by the building of the Via Egnatia, the great road linking Rome (via Brindisi) with Byzantium and the East.Ĭhristianity had slow beginnings in the city. It soon became the region’s cultural and trading centre, issuing its own coins, and when Rome conquered Macedonia in 146 BC, the city (under the name Salonica) became the natural and immediate choice of capital. When King Cassander of Macedonia founded the city in 315 BC, he named it after his wife Thessalonike, Alexander the Great’s half-sister, whose name in turn derived from the Macedons’ decisive victory (nike) over the Thessalians.
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