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Thessaloniki

The current Prefecture of Thessaloniki has been inhabited since the Prehistoric years.

Thessaloniki was founded in 316 BC on the site of the old city of Thermi, which gave its name to the Thermaic Gulf. Kassandros was its founder who also gave it the name of his consort, Thessaloniki, who was the half-sister to Alexander the Great. The foundation and history of this region is extremely rich, considering the fact that they were conquerors and at the peak of prosperity.

Due to its central geographical position, Thessaloniki grew very fast and developed into being the capital of the Macedonian state, gradually taking the leadership from Pella, the birth-city of the Macedonian Kings.

Today the city is best known as a Byzantine city, for the wealth of art and architecture that remained from the centuries when Thessaloniki was second only to Constantinople.

Recent archaeological excavations at Derveni and Vergina (site of King Philip's tomb)
have turned up such remarkable artifacts from the Macedonian period that we consider Thessaloniki most notable for its Archaeological Museum and nearby sites.

Vergina the wealth of gold funerary objects discovered at Vergina needs no explanation. The royal tomb and royal palace near the modern - day village of Vergina. Dion About 80 km of Thessaloniki, at the foot of the magnificent Mt. Olympus, is the village of Dion. Recent excavations have relived that this was an important religious centre for worship of the gods of the sacred mount. Much progress has been made in the excavations in recent years, filling the new museum with some very fine works. In history there are few persons who can be termed “Great” and even fewer who deserve to be so called.

However, Alexander, the son of Philip, King of Macedonians, was truly great.

He did not merely place his stamp on his era. Rather, he has survived - he even "lives and reigns".

Alexander was a cultural reformer, not a militaristic invader. He instituted a multinational state comprised of equally - privileged individuals, for he was a liberator and not an enslaver. The people who became part of his empire were not considered minorities but retained their national identities.

The campaigns of Alexander the Great signaled some momentous events in world history. For one thing Europe was decidedly alleviated from an Asian threat as the vast Persian superpower met its end once and for all. Also the expansion and eventual predomination of the Greek language as the international instrument of communication, with its concomitant knowledge, as well as the opening to Greek philosophy, art, and civilization in general, were extraordinary events of immense consequence for the future course of the entire world.

We have to agree with H. Bengston, that: " Neither the Roman empire, nor the triumphant route of Christianity - whose communities, at the end of ancient times, extended from Ireland to India - nor even the Byzantine Empire nor the Arabian civilization would have been created without Alexander the Great and his cosmogony works. Nevertheless, anyone with rudimentary historical knowledge is aware what Macedonian Hellenism and its genuine representatives Philip, Alexander and Aristotle stand for. In history and in thought it is high civilization an inseparable segment of the grand Greek miracle.

Among the numerous monuments of particular interest in the city are those from the Roman period, the Triumphal Arch of Galerius and Ag. Georgios (Rotonda). Thessaloniki is, however, above all famous for its Byzantine period, being second only to Constantinople itself. Its many churches whose fine mosaics and wall paintings are representative of various periods of Byzantine art have survived to enhance the image of the city. They include St. Demetrius, Panagia Acheiropoietus, the Holy Apostles, St. Sophia, St. Catherine, Panagia Chalkeon, St. Nicholas the Orphan, the Prophet Elijah, and the Monastery of Vlatadon. Large sections of the city-walls are also still standing, together with one of their main bastions, and the well-known White Tower. Noteworthy from a national, spiritual and artistic viewpoint are also the continuing strong links between the city of Thessaloniki and Mt. Athos.

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