The second largest town of Greece is probably the place to see the most Byzantine artifacts in the world, whether it’s museum objects or standing buildings. But the thousand years long heritage of the Greco-Roman Christian empire is not only a museum exhibit, but a living tradition, preserved in daily religious life. The great Orthodox […]

There are such lucky towns that offer their visitors the opportunity of time traveling. For instance, when I entered the Byzantine Art Museum in Thessaloniki, I was met by a large print with what seemed to be a drawing after a crossing between an ancient temple and a modern church. While looking at that wall-size […]

The tower of Thessaloniki is a souvenir of the lasting Ottoman occupation, when the Turks fortified the city with walls against a see attack. The tower was long time used as a prison and was the scene of several massacres. At the beginning of the 20th century, when the Greeks earned their independence, the tower […]

The closest character to Ataturk is probably Napoleon Bonaparte: a military man with great achievements on the battle field, a reformer involved in every aspect of life, with a legacy that lives to this day. Ataturk had only 15 years of political power to transform a decadent empire, attacked by all its neighbors and their […]

Strolling through the galleries of the Archeology Museum in Thessaloníki one can but wonder what happened with the art of carving in the period between Antiquity and Renaissance, when brilliant artists rediscovered the lines of the human body and the techniques necessary to reproduce movement and emotion in stone and marble. The level at which […]

Some say that this might be the oldest Christian church in the world that is still in place, while others admit that this is just the oldest monument of this type in Greece or in the city. However, the Rotunda from Thessaloniki, built in 306, is a witness to almost two millenniums of history. It […]

The zoo garden of Thessaloníki is a quiet and pleasant place where anyone can enter and stroll and sometimes even mingle with the peacocks, pelicans and wild ducks that are not closed in behind bars. A brown bear that has its own swimming pawn is the star of this habitat. The storks have their nest […]

For Greeks the image of the cloud covered peaks was so impressive, that they considered Mount Olympus as the meeting place between heaven and earth, and there for, the house of their gods. The Greek pantheon comprised 12 gods: Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Demeter, Ares, Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Hephaestus, Aphrodite, Hermes, and Dionysus, which were followed […]

In the dawn of the Christian era, the 10th century, Platamon was a strategic point, on a hill that guarded the roads of the East Roman Empire, on the shores of the Aegean see. The ruins of the ancient city of Herakleion can be found inside the walls of this fortification that now has a […]