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History
The city was founded circa 315 BC by Cassander, the King of Macedon (), on or near the site of the ancient town of Therma and twenty six other local villages. He named it after his wife Thessalonica, the sister of Alexander the Great. She gained her name from her father, Philip II of Macedon, to commemorate her birth on the day of his gaining a victory (Gr. Nike) over the Phocians, who were defeated with the help of Thessalian horsemen, the best in Greece at that time. Thessaloniki means the "victory of Thessalians" (where Thessalians derives from Thessaly which means thesi alos, i.e. "a land that was sea").
Thessaloniki developed rapidly and as early as the 2nd century BC the first walls were built, forming a large square. It was, as all the other contemporary Greek cities, an autonomous part of the Kingdom of Macedon, with its own parliament where the King was represented and could interfere in the city's domestic affairs.
The Roman Forum in central Thessaloniki
After the fall of the kingdom of Macedon in 168 BC, Thessalonica became a city of the Roman Republic. It grew to be an important trade-hub located on the Via Egnatia, a Roman road that connected Byzantium (later Constantinople), with Dyrrhachium (now Durres in Albania), facilitating trade between Europe and Asia. The city became the capital of one of the four Roman districts of Macedonia. It kept its privileges but was ruled by a praetor and had a Roman garrison. Thessaloniki's acropolis, located in the northern hills, was built in 55 BC after Thracian raids in the city's outskirts, for security reasons.
It had a Jewish colony, established during the first century, and was an early center of Christianity. On his second missionary journey, Paul of Tarsus preached in the city's synagogue, the chief synagogue of the Jews in that part of Thessaloniki, and laid the foundations of a church.
Thessaloniki acquired a patron saint, St. Demetrius, in 306. He is credited with a number of miracles that saved the city. He was the Roman Proconsul of Greece under the anti-Christian emperor Maximian and was martyred at a Roman prison, where today lays the Church of St. Demetrius, first built by the Roman sub-prefect of Illyricum Leontios in 463.
Other important remains from this period include the Arch and Tomb of Galerius, located near the center of the modern city.
When the Roman Empire was divided into eastern and western segments ruled from Byzantium/Constantinople and Rome respectively, Thessaloniki came under the control of the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantine Empire). Its importance was second only to Constantinople itself. In 390 it was the location of a revolt against the emperor Theodosius I and his Gothic mercenaries. Botheric, their general, together with several of his high officials, were killed in an uprising triggered by the imprisoning of a favorite local charioteer for pederasty with one of Botheric's slave boys.7,000 - 15,000 of the citizens were massacred in the city's hippodrome in revenge an act which earned Theodosius a temporary excommunication.
The quiet era followed until repeated barbarian invasions after the fall of the Roma Empire, while a catastrophic earthquake severely damaged the city in 620 resulting in the destruction of the Roman Forum and several other public buildings. Thessaloniki itself came under attack from Slavs in the seventh century; however, they failed to capture the city.
Byzantine brothers Saint Cyril and Saint Methodius were born in Thessaloniki and the Byzantine Emperor Michael III encouraged them to visit the northern regions as missionaries; they adopted the South Slavonic speech as the basis for the Old Church Slavonic language. In the ninth century, the Byzantines decided to move the market for Bulgarian goods from Constantinople to Thessaloniki. Tsar Simeon I of Bulgaria invaded Thrace, defeated a Byzantine army and forced the empire to move the market back to Constantinople. In 904, Saracens based at Crete managed to seize the city and after a ten day depredation, left with much loot and 22,000 slaves, mostly young people.
Despite this, the city quickly recovered, and the gradual recovery of Byzantine power during the tenth, eleventh and twelfth centuries meant that Thessaloniki entered a new golden age of peace and prosperity. The population of the city expanded, and according to Benjamin of Tudela, the city even had a Jewish community some 500 strong by the twelfth century. It also hosted the famous fair of Saint Demetrius every October, which was held just outside the city walls and lasted six days.
The economic expansion of the city continued through the twelfth century as the strong rule of the Komnenoi emperors expanded Byzantine control into Serbia and Hungary, far to the north. The city is known to have housed an imperial mint at this time, another sign of prosperity.
In the 14th century though, the city was appalled by the Zelotes social movement (1342-1349). It began as a religious conflict between bishop Gregorios Palamas, who supported conservative ideas and the monk Barlaam, who introduced progressive social ones. Quickly, it turned into a political commotion, leading to the prevalence of the Zelotes, who for a while ruled the city, applying progressive social policies.
The Byzantine Empire, unable to hold it against the Ottoman Empire's advance, sold it to Venice, which held it until it was captured by the Ottoman Sultan Murad II on 29 March 1430, after a three-day-long siege. The Ottomans had captured Thessaloniki in 1387, but lost it after the Battle of Ankara against Tamerlane in 1402.
During Ottoman times, the city received an influx of Muslims and Jews. By 1478, Thessaloniki had a population of 4,320 Muslims and 6,094 Greek Orthodox, out of a total of 10,414. By c1500, the numbers had grown to 7,986 Greeks and 8,575 Muslims, briefly making the latter the majority. Around the same time, Jews arrived from Spain. In c1500, there were only 3,770 Jews, but by 1519, there were 15,715, 54% of the city.
The city remained the largest Jewish city in the world for at least two centuries, and of its 130,000 inhabitants at the start of the 20th century, around 60,000 were Sephardic Jews. Some Romaniote Jews were also present. Thessaloniki, called Selanik in Turkish, became one of the most important cities in the Empire, being the foremost trade and commercial center in the Balkans. The railway reached the city in 1888 and new modern port facilities were built in 1896-1904. The founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, was born here in 1881, and the Young Turk movement was headquartered here in the early twentieth century.
Thessaloniki was the main "prize" of the First Balkan War, as a result of which it was united with Greece on October 26, 1912. This date has an immense importance for the city as, in addition to the aforementioned historic event of the unification, it also marks the nameday of Saint Demetrius, its patron Saint.
In 1915, during World War I, a large Allied expeditionary force landed at Thessaloniki to use the city as the base for a massive offensive against pro-German Bulgaria. A pro-Allied temporary government headed by Eleftherios Venizelos was established there, against the will of the pro-neutral King of Greece.
Most of the town was destroyed by a single fire on 18 August 1917 which was accidentally caused by some French soldiers that were camping there. The fire made some 72,000 people homeless (most of them were Turkish) out of a population of approximately 271,157 at the time. Venizelos forbade the reconstruction of the town center until a full modern city plan was prepared. This was accomplished a few years later by the French architect and archeologist Ernest Hebrard. The Hebrard plan swept away the Oriental features of Thessaloniki and transformed it to the modern, European style metropolis that it is today.
One consequence of the great fire was the fact that nearly half of the city's Jewish homes and livelihoods were destroyed leading to a massive Jewish emigration. Many went to Palestine, others stepped onto the Orient Express to Paris and still others found their way to America. Their numbers, however, were quickly replaced by a considerable number of refugees from Asia Minor following the population exchange between Greece and Turkey, after the defeat of the Greek forces in Anatolia during the Greco-Turkish War.
With these new refugees, the city expanded enormously and was nicknamed "The Refugee Capital" and "Mother of the Poor". Thessaloniki fell to the forces of Nazi Germany on April 9, 1941 and remained under German occupation until 30 October 1944. The city suffered considerable damage from Allied bombing, and almost its entire Jewish population was exterminated by the Nazis. Barely a thousand Jews survived. However, Thessaloniki was rebuilt and recovered fairly quickly after the war. This recovery included both a rapid growth in its population, as well as an impressive development of new, modern infrastructure and industrial enterprizes throughout the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. Most of the urban development of that period was, however, without a proper plan, causing traffic and zoning problems that remain to this day.
Early Christian and Byzantine monuments of Thessaloniki were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1988. Thessaloniki became the European City of Culture for 1997.
Thessaloniki is one of the most important university centers in Southeastern Europe and it hosts a large and vibrant student population coming from all over the country. The city features two state universities the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, the largest university in Greece (founded 1926) and the University of Macedonia, as well as the Technological Education Institute of Thessaloniki. In addition, there are several private institutions that are either affiliated with universities in other nations, or accredited abroad.
This article is being published under the General Public Licence GNU and is retrieved by the Free Encyclopedia Wikipedia-Keyword "Thessaloniki".
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