Some Thessaloniki History

I came to this city hoping to find some history.  And there are bits and pieces.  But not nearly as much as I thought I might find.

Some background:  Thessaloniki is a 2500 year old city.  That ‘niki’ part means victory, victory over the Thessalans or some people with a similar sounding name.

The part of the history that grabs me starts in the 15^th century when the Ottoman Turks conquered it, lost it, the Venetians took it, and the Ottomans retook it and held it until 1916 (?) 1912. 

This is not so unusual, there are plenty of Greek cities that were long-ruled by Turks, but something else happened:  Thessaloniki, or Salonika as it is often called, became a focus for migration for the Sephardic Jews who had been expelled from Spain.  They came speaking Ladino (Judeo-Spanish), and came in such numbers that they played a major role in Salonika’s life for centuries (real centuries, about four of them).

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OK, so this was formerly a polyglot, multi-confessional, multi-ethnic city.  And as other cities of the time, faced with periodic plagues (cholera, black plague, etc).  To keep up population, migrants came in from the countryside.  Many of these were Bulgarians.  And then there were also Albanians, Vlachs (romanian speakers, I don’t know their origins). And I am missing lots and lots.  Some kept their languages, but in time many christians hellenized, many muslims turkified. 

Mark Mazower’s Salonica City of Ghosts is my source for lots of this background. The Wikipedia entry is contentious and has lots of point of view arguments. The discussion page is loaded with debate, if you go in for that sort of thing.

In 1917 there was a huge fire. And at the end of WWI the Turks left/were compelled to leave.  And the Jews were deported and killed in 1943.  And for a long time the Greek government made major effort to ensure that everyone thought of Thessaloniki as totally a Greek city.

All of which means that there is not much history on the surface.  So I am walking and looking, and trying to decipher what there is.

Since I have loads of time to walk, and I can pause and study a building, or a street line, or a bit of ornamentation, it is slow and patient work.  Ha!  Hardly work.

And good food, lots of sun.  I need to figure out how to put up photos.