Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The best-preserved portion begins at a large circular keep, the Trigónion or
Chain
Towe r
(so called for its encircling ornamental moulding), in the northeast angle where
the easterly city walls veer west. A much smaller circuit of walls rambles around the
district of
Eptapýrgio
(Seven Towers), enclosing the old eponymous acropolis at the top
end. For centuries it served as the city's
prison
until abandoned as too inhumane in
1989; it is described as a sort of Greek Devil's Island in a number of plaintive old songs
entitled
Yedi Küle
, the Turkish name for Eptapýrgio.
The Jewish Museum
Ayíou Miná 13 • Tues, Fri & Sun 11am-2pm, Wed & Thurs 11am-2pm & 5-8pm • €3 •
T
2310 250 406,
W
jmth.gr
Way down in the Bazaar quarter, an early twentieth-century house, once belonging
to a Jewish family, has been beautifully renovated to accommodate the impressive
Jewish Museum
. On the ground floor are a few precious remains and some moving
photographic documentation of the city's Jewish cemetery, which contained half
a million graves until it was vandalized by the Nazis. Outstanding is a marble
Roman stele from the third century, recycled as a Jewish tombstone for a member
of the post-1492 Sephardic community from Iberia. In the middle of the courtyard
is a finely sculpted fountain that once stood in a city synagogue. Upstairs, a
well-presented exhibition, clearly labelled in Greek and English, traces the history
of the Jewish presence from around 140 BC to the present day and displays some
of the few religious and secular items that miraculously survived the 1917 fire and
the Holocaust.
4
The portside museums
If you cross busy Koundouriótou, the harbour-end extension of Níkis, to the city's
port
, through Gate A you'll find a set of dockside warehouses that have been converted
into the city's latest arts complex, complete with bars and, perhaps bizarrely, a
kindergarten. Sharing the same warehouse as the hermetic Cinema Museum, only of
interest to Greek film buffs, the outstanding
Museum of Photography
(Tues-Fri
11am-7pm, Sat-Sun 11am-9pm; €2;
T
2310 566 716,
W
thmphoto.gr) stages
exhibitions by Greek and international photographers. Across the road in an
unprepossessing breeze-block bunker, the
State Museum of Contemporary Art
(Tues-Fri
10am-6pm, Sat & Sun 11am-7pm; €3) hosts exhibitions of paintings, often related to
the city and its history.
THE JEWS OF THESSALONÍKI
In the early sixteenth century, after virtually all the Jews were expelled from Spain and
Portugal, nearly half of the inhabitants of Thessaloníki, over 80,000 people, were Jewish. For
them “Salonik” or “Salonicco” ranked as a “Mother of Israel” and the community dominated the
city's commercial, social and cultural life for some four hundred years, mostly tolerated by the
Ottoman authorities but often resented by the Greeks. The first waves of Jewish emigration to
Palestine, western Europe and the United States began after World War I. Numbers had
dropped to fewer than 60,000 at the onset of World War II, during which all but a tiny fraction
were
deported
from Platía Eleftherías to the concentration camps and immediate gassing.
The vast Jewish cemeteries east of the city centre, among the world's largest, were desecrated
in 1944; to add insult to injury, the area was later covered over by the new university and
expanded trade-fair grounds in 1948. Thessaloníki's only surviving pre-Holocaust
synagogue
is the Monastiriótou at Syngroú 35, with an imposing, if austere, facade; it's usually open for
Friday-evening and Saturday-morning worship. At the very heart of the former Jewish district
sprawls the Modhiáno, the still-functioning central meat, fish and produce market, named
after the wealthy Jewish Modiano family which long owned it.
