Thessaloniki

Thessaloniki is the better food city in Greece, and Greek visitors come from Athens just to eat. The reason is partly history: a Sephardic, Pontic and Asia Minor refugee population layered over a Macedonian Greek base. It is also habit. The city’s tavernas, meze houses (mezedopoleia) and bakeries have stayed family-run, and prices remain noticeably lower than in the southern capital. Start with bougatsa pastry for breakfast at Bantis or Hatzis. End with a long dinner at a mezedopoleion in Ladadika or near the Modiano market.

The Macedonian general Cassander founded the city in 315 BC and named it for his wife Thessalonike, half-sister of Alexander the Great. Under the Byzantines it grew into the empire’s second city after Constantinople. UNESCO lists 15 of the surviving churches from that period as a single property, and they are scattered through the modern street grid. Hagia Sophia and Agios Demetrios are the two large set pieces. The Rotunda was built as a Roman mausoleum, then became a church, a mosque and a church again. Its early Christian mosaics are intact in the dome.

The Sephardic Jewish community, expelled from Spain in 1492, settled in Thessaloniki and made it the largest Sephardic city in the world by the early twentieth century. Half the population spoke Ladino, the Judaeo-Spanish language. The community was destroyed in 1943: 96 per cent of the city’s Jews were murdered in Auschwitz. The Jewish Museum on Agiou Mina tells the story. For the everyday walk, take the redeveloped Nea Paralia, the long waterfront promenade that runs from the White Tower south to the concert hall.

Thessaloniki has a real winter. Come from late September to November, or in April and May, when the city is at its temperate best. Stay at least three nights, ideally with a day trip to Pella, Alexander’s birthplace, and to the royal Macedonian tombs at Vergina. There, the gold larnax, or burial casket, of Philip II is the single most consequential object in the museum.

House Notes

  1. Arrival

    Hellenic Train’s Intercity from Athens to Thessaloniki takes 5 hours 15 minutes on the reduced timetable: Intercity 50 leaves Athens at 6.58am and Intercity 56 at 5.58pm, and the return trains leave at 5.55am and 4.49pm. Track works will eventually bring the journey back to about 3 hours 55 minutes; until then, an air transfer is the better choice.

  2. The address

    Electra Palace Thessaloniki stands at the waterfront end of Aristotelous Square. Orizontes, the restaurant on the roof, looks over the Thermaikos Gulf to Mount Olympus across the bay. The hotel curates its art programme in partnership with MOMus, the city’s modern art institution, and the lobby is the meeting point for most arrivals.

  3. The kitchens

    Mourga, the open-kitchen seafood restaurant of chef Giannis Loukakis at Christopoulou 12, prints its menu on cardboard each morning according to what the fishermen and the markets bring that day. Dishes include crayfish with goat-garlic butter and grilled cuttlefish with fava beans. Covers are limited, so book a week ahead, and longer in summer.

  4. Gerovassiliou

    Domaine Gerovassiliou, in Epanomi a short drive south-east of the city, was founded in 1981 by Vangelis Gerovassiliou. With Vassilis Logothetis, a vine scientist at Aristotle University, he rescued the Malagousia grape from extinction. The wine museum holds more than 2,600 corkscrews.

  5. The crypt

    The crypt beneath Agios Demetrios holds the Roman bath where Demetrios was imprisoned and martyred in 303. It came to light after the Great Thessaloniki Fire of 1917 gutted the basilica, and the church was reconsecrated in 1949. Six surviving mosaic panels in the upper church date from before the Iconoclasm of 730, when religious images were banned, and UNESCO inscribed the church in 1988.

  6. Ano Poli

    The Heptapyrgion, the Byzantine and Ottoman fortress at the top of Ano Poli, the upper town, held political prisoners under the Metaxas regime, the Axis occupation and the Junta, until the prison closed in 1989. Aristotle University and Cornell began a systematic restoration in 1990. The walls run back south through the lanes of the upper town; make the climb in the morning.

  7. Modiano

    The Modiano Market, designed in the early 20th century by the Sephardic engineer Eli Modiano, reopened in December 2022 after a ten-million-euro restoration by the Fais Group. The renovated hall holds 75 shops, stalls and eateries under the original ironwork. Saturday morning is the time to go, before the visitors from Athens arrive.

  8. The synagogue

    The Monastirioton Synagogue was built between 1925 and 1927 by Jewish families displaced from Monastir in the Balkan Wars. It is the only one of the city’s pre-war synagogues that survived; the Red Cross requisitioned it as a warehouse through the German occupation. A restoration in 2016 by Elias Messinas returned it to ceremonial use, and services are held on the High Holy Days, the Jewish New Year and the Day of Atonement.

  9. The White Tower

    The cylindrical Ottoman tower at the foot of the waterfront was built in the 15th century and was for centuries a prison, so grim it was called the Tower of Blood. A spiral ramp climbs through floors that now hold the Museum of Byzantine Culture’s permanent exhibition on the city, from its founding in 316 BC to the present, level by level. The interior is tight, so go early, before the promenade fills.

  10. Athos

    Mount Athos admits only male visitors, and the Diamonitirion, the entry permit, is issued by the Pilgrim’s Bureau at 109 Egnatia Street. The daily quota is 120 visitors: 110 Orthodox and 10 non-Orthodox. Apply 3 to 6 months ahead, and collect the permit in person at Ouranoupoli on the morning of entry.

Anchorage Notes

  1. The port

    The Port of Thessaloniki is the gateway of northern Greece: the country’s principal sea door to the Balkans and central Europe, and a commercial and container port among the busiest in Greece, with ferries and cruise ships at its passenger quays. Its operator, ThPA, runs 14 quays at the head of the Thermaic Gulf, and it is a working port throughout. A yacht goes to the marina down the coast instead.

  2. Aretsou

    Aretsou, the Thessaloniki marina at Kalamaria, lies some 7 kilometres down the gulf from the centre and is the city’s yacht harbour. It has 240 berths for craft up to 30 metres, with fuel, power and the full service of a modern marina, and it is open all year. A yacht lies here rather than at the commercial port, with the Kalamaria waterfront and its tavernas along the shore.

  3. Peraia

    Peraia lies on the eastern shore of the Thermaic Gulf, 15 kilometres south of the city near the airport. It is the nearest of the resort towns the Thessalonians call their Riviera, with a pedestrianised seafront and beaches along it. A yacht lies off the shore here, on the city’s holiday coast, with the gulf opening south toward Halkidiki and the sea.

  4. Nea Michaniona

    Nea Michaniona lies further down the eastern shore. Greek refugees from Michaniona on the Cyzicus peninsula founded it when they crossed the Aegean in the 1920s, and it is a fishing town whose harbour is the working front of the lower gulf. A yacht lies off a town that has kept to the sea for its living, at the far, plainer end of the Thessaloniki water.

Mythology

  1. Mount Olympus

    On the northern foot of Olympus, some 80 kilometres south of Thessaloniki, the Macedonians built Dion, their sanctuary of the mountain's god. Two inscriptions found there direct that they be set up in the sanctuary of Olympian Zeus, and Diodorus records Alexander the Great sacrificing there in 334 BC, at games begun by his predecessor Archelaus.