A tour in Thessaloniki's city centre

Welcome back to the deep dive. Today, we are attempting something a little bit different. Usually, when we explore a topic, we're looking at it horizontally, you know, spreading out a timeline or a map. But today, we're going vertical. Deep down. Exactly. We're looking at a city that is essentially a geological stack of civilizations. We're heading to Thessaloniki, Greece. It's such a fascinating case study in urban resilience. You know, architects and historians have a specific term for it. They call Thessaloniki a living polimpsest. A polimpsest. I love that word. It's for old manuscripts, right? We're scribe would scrape the ink off an old scroll to write something new. Yes, but the old writing, the ghost text is still faintly visible underneath. Okay, so the ink here is stone. Brick, stone, and mortar. And the scraping usually happens because of some catastrophe, like a fire or an earthquake. So what you have is a city where the Roman street is the basement of a Byzantine church, which is the foundation of an Ottoman bath, which is next door to a 1920s Art Deco apartment building. It's a complete lasagna of history. And so today's deep dive is built on a stack of sources that, well, they reflect that complexity. We've got municipal walking guides, some architectural analyses of bad houses, and these really specific local history articles. Our mission is simple. We're going to take you the learner on a walk, a very specific route through the noise and chaos of the market district to see if we can, you know, decode some of these layers. And to understand the surface layer, the city as it looks today, we have to start with the event that acted as the greater racer. We need to talk about August 18, 1917. The Great Fire. The Great Fire. And this wasn't just the small blaze. It started from a spark in a refugees kitchen, something seemingly minor, but it just spread. It raged for 32 hours, destroyed 9,500 buildings. It left over 70,000 people homeless. It effectively gutted the entire historical and commercial heart of the city, which is, I mean, it's tragic, obviously. But for an urban planner, total destruction is, well, it's a blank canvas. Precisely. It was a tabula rassa. And the man who stepped up to the easel was a French architect named Ernest Abroad. He led this international committee to redesign the city completely from scratch. And his vision is what you see when you look at the most famous part of Thessaloniki today, Aristotle's Square. That massive, you shaped open space that just hugs the waterfront. It feels so grand, very European. That was the goal. Hebroad wanted to create what he called a monumental axis. The idea was to visually connect the administrative center of the city. The Dicaterio, which sits up on the hill, connected all the way down to the sea. Yes, a boulevard of the nations. It's interesting because when you walk there, the buildings aren't just a random collection of shops. They all match. That is by design, specifically a decree from 1923. It mandated exactly what the Fassads had to look like. So they weren't trying to copy Paris or something. Not exactly. He was trying to synthesize the city's own past. If you look at the arches and the arcades on Aristotleists, they have Byzantine influences, even some Arab and colonial elements. It's a neo-Bizantine style that never actually existed in Byzantium. The fantasy of order. Imposed on a city that had been chaotic and organic for centuries. So that's the official city, the grand design. But our sources suggest that the moment you step off that perfect axis, literally just turn one corner. The grid breaks down and things get a lot more interesting. And that's where the real pulse of the city is. So we're going to leave the Grand Square and turn on to Vasellios' Irracalius Street. Now Vasellios' Irracalio is a personal favorite. It's narrow, it's loud. It smells like grilled meat. But before we get to the food, let's unpack the name. The Cedios' Irracalio means King Heraclius. Who is this guy? It's funny because if you stopped people on that street, I bet most wouldn't know. Flavius Heraclius was a Byzantine emperor, reign from 610 to 641 AD. And he is pivotal for one massive reason. He made Greek the official language of the empire. Wait, I thought the Byzantine empire was always Greek. Culturally yes, but administratively it was the Eastern Roman Empire. Until Heraclius, all the laws, the administration, it was largely in Latin, Heraclius just flipped the switch. He's the reason we associate Byzantium so strongly with the Greek language. He is, and the sources also describe him as a bit of a heart-throb too. Right, handsome, blonde, blue-eyed. The whole package, a golden boy. He had some, let's say, personal quirks. Ah, we're talking about the scandal. The scandal was huge. After his first wife died, he married his niece, Martina. Which, even in the seventh century, was a big no-no. A massive taboo. The patriarch was furious. The people booed him in the hippodrome. It was the tabloid story of its day. There was something else. Aphobia. Yes. On top of all that, despite being this great warrior emperor who defeated the Persians, he reportedly had a severe phobia of water. Afraid of water in Thessaloniki or Constantinople. I mean, these are cities defined by the sea. Reportedly yes. He'd go to great lengths to avoid crossing it. History is full of these little ironies. But the real irony of Esaleus Heraclius Street today is how it's changed in just the last 20 years. Okay, right. So if we went back to say the late 90s, the source to say we wouldn't find food, we'd find soldering irons. It was Gadget Alley. This was the place you went to buy, household appliances, fuses, the latest, you know, bulky electronics. It was a functional, unglamorous street. So how does a street go from selling toasters to being this huge gastronomic destination? It usually starts with just one pioneer. In 1982, a tavern opened up called Tavum video, which translates to the bombs. The bombs. Okay, I have to ask, is that a reference to the distinct shape of the meatballs or the explosive effect on your digestion later? The locals will tell you it's the shape, but I think the double meaning is part of the charm, but the bombs changed the vibe. It brought people there to eat. Not just a shop. Exactly. And slowly, the electronic shops couldn't compete with the big box stores. So they closed and more food spots opened. Now you have these amazing bakeries, cafes and their article mentions that on certain days, the street just completely transforms. Sikinopempty. Burnt Thursday. It's the big, meaty day right before lent. On that day and also on Christmas Eve, the shop owners literally drag industrial grills out onto the sidewalk. So the street just closes the traffic. It has to. It becomes a wall to a wall party. I love that image. You're standing on a street named after an incestuous water-fearing emperor eating a meatball called a bomb on a spot that used to self-uses. That is the definition of urban layering. And we're only one block in. If we keep walking down, we hit the intersection with Comdenon Street. And there we find a building that forces us to really visualize this stacking of history, the Luluddika. The flower district. Yeah. It's a really romantic spot. You have this heavy old stone building. And for decades, florists had their stalls literally leaning against its outer walls. But the building itself isn't a flower market, is it? No, it's a bathhouse. Specifically, the Yehudi Hamam. Okay, let's break down the names. Pazar Hamam is one name, bath of the market. That makes sense. But Yehudi Hamam. That means bath of the Jews. It was named that simply because it sits right in the heart of what was for centuries a predominantly Jewish commercial district. It dates back to the 16th century, maybe even the late 15th. It was a double bath. So separate sections for men and women? Correct. But the detail that really stuck with me and the one I want you to picture is the elevation. If you stand on the sidewalk today and look at the entrance, where are you looking? You're looking down. The bathhouse is sunken. It looks like it was built in a pit. But it wasn't. When it was built, it was at street level. So the street moved up. The city rose. This is a concept that is so crucial to understanding Pazaloniki. Over 500 years, you have fires, earthquakes, demolitions. When a building collapses, they don't always cart away every single brick. They level it out and they build on top. So the ground level of the city today is what two meters higher than it was in the 1500s? About that, yes. We are literally walking on top of the crushed remains of the past versions of the city. Wow. The flower shocks used to cling to the walls and they basically hid the lower part of the building. But recent restorations cleared them away and created the sunken area so you can see the full height of the structure. It's like an archaeological trench in the middle of a shopping district. And speaking of shopping, just the stones throw from the sunken bath, we enter what you could call the stomach of the city. The central markets. Great. And the sources highlight three of them, Modigano, Capani and Bezzostini. And they all have completely different characters. They really represent three different eras of the city's soul, don't they? They do. Let's start with Modiana because it connects back to that official city vibe we saw on Aristotleist. It feels the most European. It's a covered market with a glass roof, pediments. It looks like something you'd see in Paris or London. And that was the intention. It was built in 1922 by Eli Modiano, who was a prominent Jewish engineer. But here is the layer. It was built on the ruins of the Talmud Torah synagogue, which was destroyed in the 1917 fire. Exactly. So you have a Jewish engineer building a modern European style market on the site of a destroyed synagogue in a city that had just become part of the Greek state. That's a complex knot of identity right there. It is. It has five arcades. And historically, this was the place for high-end food, the best fish, the best meats. Now compare that to Capani, which is right across the street. Night and day. If Modiano is structure, Capani is just chaos. Total chaos. The name Un Capani. is Turkish for flower market. But they're not selling flower anymore. Not for a long, long time. The sources have this great detail that by the early 20th century, its function had drifted. They sold lime, they sold tin, and in the center square, they sold pets. Like dogs and cats. More like sheep and chickens. In the city center. Right in the city center. And that vibe remains. Capone is open air, narrow alleys, people shouting prices, all of stacked and pyramids. It feels like a traditional Balkan bazaar. It hasn't been civilized in the same way Modiano has. And then there's the vault. Bezostini. Ugh, the Bezostini, my personal favorite. It's not just a market. It's a fortress. It certainly looks like one. Six domes, lead roof. These incredibly thick, methanry walls. It had to be secure. In the Ottoman era, Bez meant cotton or linen cloth. This was the market for luxury fabrics. Gold jewelry. This is where the wealth was stored. Think of it as a giant walk-in safety deposit box. And it's old, 15th century. Very old. And there is a story in the restoration report for the Bezostini that I just absolutely loved. It's about the roof. The ledge sheets. Tell us what they found up there. So in 1978, during restoration, they went up to repair the lead domes. And they found inscriptions. Not modern graffiti, but names and dates scratched into the soft lead by the workers who had repaired that roof over centuries. It's like a guest book that spans 200 years. And the names tell the real story of the city. You have a Serbian worker in 1800, a Turkish worker in 1850, a Greek worker in 1920, French names, Slavic names. All sweating on the same roof, looking at the same view, scratching their mark into the same building. It really challenges the clean national narratives. We often hear we say, this is the Ottoman period, or this is the Greek period. But up on that roof, it was just a multicultural workforce keeping the rain out. The building remembers the people. Even if the history books focus on the emperors. Now amidst all this commerce, the food, the fabrics, the shouting, you have the islands of silence, the churches. But even the churches here have battle scars. Take Agiosmenus, for example. It's right there in the market area. In the Turkish records, it had a very specific nickname, Yannick Manister, which means the burned monastery. It's a tough nickname to shake. Well, it earned it. It was bombarded by Venetian ships in 1687. It burned in the 18th century, burned again in the 19th. But the market just kept growing around it. It's a true survivor. And the current version, rebuilt in 1852, the interior looks a little weird to me via Greek Orthodox Church. It's very unusual. It has recoco and baroque influences. It looks almost central European inside. But why? They were under Ottoman rule then. That's the point. The Greek community in the mid-19th century was looking to the west for its identity. They were signaling through architecture we belonged to Europe, even while they were subjects of the Sultan. It was architecture as political defiance. And then just a short walk from there near the Roman Forum, we have the red church, Panaya Chalkin. The Virgin of the Coppersmiths. One other trade connection. Always. The area has housed coppersmiths since the Byzantine era. And if you walk there today, you can still hear the hammers. This church is much older, built in 1028 AD. And like the Hamam we talked about, it's in a hole. It's in a hole. You have to walk down a big flight of stairs to get inside. It's this sunken garden from the 11th century surrounded by 1960s apartment blocks. It visually proves how much the city has grown on top of itself. So we've done the Ottoman layer, the Jewish layer, the Byzantine layer. We have to go to basement now. The deepest layer. The Roman roots. The Roman Forum. It's further up the Aristotle's axis. And for a long time, the city literally forgot it was even there. How do you lose a forum? It's massive. You build on top of it. In the 1960s, the plan was to build a huge courthouse on that spot. But as soon as they started digging the foundations, they hit marble. And they found a massive complex. Huge. Two things really stand out. First, the cryptoporticus. Which sounds like something from a fantasy novel. It's a semi-subterranean stowa, so covered hallways. In the early Christian years, as the Roman infrastructure crumbled, they converted these hallways into a giant water system for the city. So they were repurposing even back then? Absolutely. The second find was the Odian, a theater. But during the persecutions of Diocletian, they weren't putting on comedies. Here's an arena. It was. Gladiatorial games, wild animal fights, right where people walk their dogs today. Unbelievable. But here's the aha moment for me. We talked about hebron earlier, the French architect who designed the modern Aristotle's axis. Right, the clean slate. Well, it turns out his new axis aligns almost perfectly with the entrance to the ancient Roman Forum. And the main Roman road, the Vierigia, ran exactly where the modern Ignatius street is today. So he didn't just invent a new city. He accidentally, or maybe subconsciously, snapped the city back to its Roman skeleton. The city has a memory. It wants to flow a certain way. The fire cleared the clutter and the old bones just re-emerged. So let's bring this all together. You're in Thessaloniki. You grab a coolery that's sesame bread ring from a bakery on Vasleo's Iraq Leo. You walk past a sunken bathhouse that used to have flower shops. You cut through a glass roofed market built on a synagogue. You are not just shopping. You are time traveling. Every time you step down two steps to enter a church, you are stepping back 500 years. It seems like the defining characteristic of this city isn't any one monument, but it's resilience. It's ability to absorb disaster. Absorb and adapt. A fire destroys the center, build a European boulevard, a bathhouse loses its customers, lean flower shops against it. An emperor creates a scandal. Name a street after him and throw a party there 1500 years later. It's the living poem, Sest. The writing never really goes away. It just gets written over. And that leads to a final thought that I think is worth chewing on. We look at the Hamam and the church and we're fascinated that they're buried two meters down. We see the lead graffiti from 1800 as history, but the process hasn't stopped. You mean we are currently the top layer? Exactly. We are the current surface, but if the ground level keeps rising, what will our layer look like to an archaeologist 500 years from now? That is a wild thought. Will they find the graffiti of today? Will they wonder why we were eating meatballs called bombs? Or why we built a luxury metro station right next to an Ottoman market. We're just the current authors on the parchment. We aren't the final draft. Not even close. It is a humbling thought to carry with you next time you're stuck in traffic on Ignatia. We are all just future archaeology. Indeed. Thank you for joining us on this walk through the layers of Thessaloniki. It was a pleasure. And to the learner listening, keep exploring. You never know what history you're standing on top of. We'll catch you in the next deep dot.