Thessaloniki is the Metropolis of Macedonia, the second largest city in Greece and one of the oldest cities in Europe. It stretches over twelve kilometers in a bowl formed by low hills facing a bay that opens into the Gulf of Thermaikos; it is characterised by a thriving intellectual, commercial and industrial life.

When King Kassander of Macedonia founded Thessaloniki in 315 BC on the site of the ancient Greek town of Therme, he named it after his wife, the half-sister of Alexander the Great. The city subsequently gained the reputation of being “Mother of Macedonia”, a commercial centre possessing connections with all the ports in the East, its own coinage and a cultural development equal to that of the other ancient Greek cities.

A “free city” during the Roman era, linked to the East and the West by Via Egnatia (130 BC), it preserved the Greek language and its ethnic integrity, developing into the most populous city in Macedonia and with the most important monuments that still adorn it. In 50 AD, Apostle Paul founded in Thessaloniki the second Christian church on the European continent, to which he later addressed his “Epistles to Thessalonians”. Joint capital of the Byzantine Empire and cradle of the Christian faith and Greek culture, Thessaloniki was the “eye of Europe and particularly of Greece”. It still preserves outstanding monuments that are characteristic of Byzantine art from the 5th through the 14th centuries AD. The artistic, intellectual and religious influences it exerted, decisively contributed to the development of the Balkan peoples who were converted to the Christian faith by the Thessalonian theologians Cyril and Methodius (863 AD).

During the long period of Ottoman occupation (1430-1912) and in spite of the terrible acts of destruction it suffered, Thessaloniki retained its moral and ethnic strength, which it had inherited from its age-old culture. After constant struggles and sacrifices, in 1912 the city regained its freedom.