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<\/a>included one of his seven wives) that has the items.\u00a0\u00a0We also went to the nearby Pella museum, more recently excavated\u2014it opened last year with EU money\u2014which has some wonderful floor\u00a0\u00a0mosaics.\u00a0\u00a0Pella was the capital of Macedonia at a time when it was on the Gulf; erosion moved the Gulf nearly forty miles away, which led to the foundation of Thessalonica, named for the wife of King Cassander, who was one of Alexander\u2019s daughters.\u00a0\u00a0The local archeological museum stresses the history of Macedonia, with its own collection of gold jewelry\u2014with nary a reference to those upstarts down south (Athens).<\/p>\nThessalonica, and the rest of Macedonia, came under Roman rule around 140 BC, and for the next 1400 years was mostly Roman or Byzantine.\u00a0\u00a0The heyday of the city was probably around 300 AD, when Diocletian\u2019s fellow Captured several times by the Turks, it finally came under Ottoman rule in 1430, and while the Turkish population left in 1912 (after the first Balkan War, when Thessaloniki became part of Greece) or 1923, when over 90,000 Greeks from Asia Minor were \u201cexchanged\u201d for Turks in Greece after Turkish armies defeated the Greek\/Allied forces that tried to partition Turkey, there are still some Turkish influences remaining.\u00a0\u00a0The White Finally, as a consequence of the Turkish conquest, the city welcomed a large number of Sephardic Jews, from Spain.\u00a0\u00a0I remember that Bayazit II (I think that was the Sultan) listed among his achievements in his tomb, sending ships to take the Jews from inquisition-driven Spain to the Ottoman lands.\u00a0\u00a0Thessaloniki was one of the main destinations, partly because, as our guide noted, the Turks wanted several minority groups to balance the Christians (Paul preached here in\u00a0\u00a050 AD\u2014we went to the monastery that is now on the site\u2014and some say the first Christian community was in Thessalonica).\u00a0\u00a0The Jerusalem of the Balkans (as it was known) lasted until Nazi occupation; in 1943, 50,000 Jews from the city were sent to concentration camps.\u00a0\u00a096.5 percent never made it back.<\/p>\n Unfortunately for the historians, though, most of the old city was burned in 1917, and the planning for a new city\u2014or the preservation of the heritage\u2014has not been entirely successful.\u00a0\u00a0The Roman Agora (the marketplace) got <\/a>coruler, Galerius, made Thessalonika his <\/a> capital.\u00a0\u00a0There\u2019s an Arch of Triumph he built, the remains of a palace, and a rotunda that has (like so many of the churches) also seen use as a mosque.\u00a0\u00a0Impressive as well are the walls that Theodosius, who encircled Constantinople with the walls that held the city <\/a>safe for most of its history, built in the 4th<\/sup>\u00a0century <\/a>B.C.\u00a0\u00a0After all, Thessaloniki was a major port on the Via Egnatia, the main route between the old and new Rome. The extant older churches, some going back to the 6th<\/sup> century, including a copy of Hagia Sophia (called Hagia Sophia), have icons and mosaics and frescoes that are dazzling.\u00a0\u00a0There is a stunning Byzantine museum that has mostly local art, with nary a mention of the New Rome (Constantinople).<\/p>\n<\/a>Tower, one of the brand identifiers, joining the coast with the city wall, and at various times a prison, was built by either the Turks or the Venetians; a fortress at the top of the highest hill (the Acropolis) also became a Turkish prison that the Greek government also used for political prisoners until 1974, when the Greek dictatorship fell.\u00a0\u00a0One famous Turk\u2014Mustafa Kemal, better known as Ataturk, the man who created modern Turkey, was born here.\u00a0\u00a0We went to his birthplace, which is part of the Turkish consulate, but the promised museum is still abuilding.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>uncovered when the city tried to build a courthouse; the courthouse did get built elsewhere, but preservation in Greece in general, and in Thessaloniki in particular, has been a struggle.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s interesting to note that the EU, which has been taking Greece to task for its economic weaknesses, has been funding a lot of the excavations.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s just that there\u2019s so much here!<\/p>\n