Splendid Byzantine churches head Thessaloniki’s holy sites

THESSALONIKI, GREECE » Under fluttering strings of Greek and Byzantine flags, three men raised a party tent on the terrace of the 5th century Osios David church one recent Saturday, hoping it would shelter festivalgoers from the heat that already shrouded the view of Mount Olympus across the gulf.

That’s Thessaloniki in a snapshot — a seaside trove of early Christian art and architecture, with echoes of the sacred all around the city, from the mythical mountain home of the ancient Greek gods to the contemporary Orthodox Christian monasticism of Mount Athos.

Pervasive if more hidden traces of Islam and Judaism also persist, even though many monuments were destroyed in a 1917 fire.

“People see the (archeological) ruins next to them, but no one knows the diverse history,” said Angeliki Ziaka, a professor of religion at Thessaloniki’s Aristotle

University. “Now is the time to rebuild this knowledge, to find the

intermarriage of cultures.” Each of the last six years, I’ve

spent at least a few days in and around Greece’s second-largest

metropolis, which bubbles with the energy of a city historically at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, about halfway between Athens and Istanbul.

I find Thessaloniki eminently walkable even in the summer heat, thanks to an inexhaustible supply of the iced coffee drink called frappé and the sea breezes off the Thermaic Gulf. Overlooking its waters are the iconic White Tower and a beloved, miles-long promenade.

Simple meandering leads to monuments woven into today’s urban fabric: Going to buy roses at the flower market, I discovered next to it a 500-year-old bathhouse (hammam) built by the Ottomans in the multi-domed style of Byzantine architecture and named Yahudi Hammam, after the Sephardic Jews who settled here.

The hammams and the stillfunctioning markets were for centuries the mingling places for the city’s Jews, Muslims and Christians, who lived in separate neighborhoods, Ziaka said.

GIOVANNA DELL’ORTO — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Visitors admire the Byzantine mosaics adorning the gigantic dome of the Rotunda in Thessaloniki, Greece. The circular building was built as a Roman temple or mausoleum in the 300s, shortly after became a Christian church, later on a mosque – and is now a museum, though liturgy is still celebrated a few times a year.

GIOVANNA DELL’ORTO — THE ASSOCIATED PRESS The White Tower, built in the late 15th century as part of the city’s defensive walls, stands as the iconic monument of Thessaloniki, Greece. The seaside promenade that extends for miles in front of it is beloved by tourists and locals, especially to beat the summer heat.