Greece Trip: Alexander the Great and Thessaloniki (4.18.24)

We visited Thessaloniki on April 18, 2024.  When I'm remembering a city, I usually remember a particular monument or museum.  When I remember Thessaloniki, I remember David and I not understanding our waitress and ending up with an entree that cost $200 and filled three large bowls!  It was the most elegant restaurant we'd eaten at on our trip, and we were excited for a good meal.  The menu offered fresh fish for 34 Euros.  "How big do you want the fish?" the waitress asked, indicating that several selections were floating around in a tank.  "Really big," I said, thinking that any fish I chose would cost 34 Euros.  Since the waitress didn't speak much English, we left it at that.  When the fish was cooked up, it filled one bowl for David and three bowls for me! The bill?  197 Euros.  When we questioned the bill, the waitress said, "It was a big, big fish." "We'll laugh about this later," I told Dave.  "Let's just pay the bill and go."  The fish was delicious!

 

Thessaloniki is a very historic place.  It is in Macedonia, which is now a province of Greece, but which anciently had its own rulers.  It is also the home of Alexander the Great, perhaps the greatest conqueror the world has ever known.

In just a few years, he led his armies as far east as India and Afghanistan.  When we visited Uzbekistan, a museum curator in Termez, near the Afghan boarder, showed us Greek-looking statues which she said dated back to the time of Alexander the Great!  Alexander died in Babylon in his thirties, but his influence in spreading Greek culture (which Macedonia had incorporated) lasted for millenia.

We visited Pella, the home of Alexander the Great which is near Thessaloniki.  The museum included statues of Alexander, as well as mosaics from the floors of his palace, and vases and jewelry from that period.

Pillars still stood from the ruins of the palace and the city that surrounded it.

Alexander the Great conquered Greece and much of the rest of the known world between 336 and 323 B.C.  

The Romans conquered Macedonia, including Thessaloniki, in 168 B.C.  They built an amphitheater, arches, and a forum in Thessaloniki, as in other Roman cities. Ruins of those Roman buildings still exist.   

When Paul preached in Thessaloniki during the first century A.D., it was a Roman city.

Paul's presence is memorialized in the St. Paul Orthodox church in Thessaloniki.

And there are yet more layers of history in Thessaloniki.  Dave and I took a bus tour of the city that began at the White Tower, which was used as a prison and place of execution under the Turks.  It is now a museum of Thessaloniki's history.

We walked up the winding staircase within the tower.

We also drove through the old stone wall that used to surround the city, to protect it from invaders.  We felt that we had explored only a few of the many layers of history in this memorable place.