Heptapyrgion is dominated by a second and that by a third eminence towards the north. The commercial quarter of the town, lying naturally to the north-west, towards the great valleys by which the inland traffic is conveyed, is now pierced by broad and straight streets paved with lava; and the quay extends from the north-west of the city for four-fifths of a mile to the Kauli-Kule (Tower of Blood), or as it is now called Ak-Kule (White Tower). The old Via Egnatia traverses the city from what is now the Vardar Gate to the Calamerian Gate. The houses are for the most part insignificant wooden erections covered with lime or mud. Two Roman triumphal arches used to span the Via Egnatia. The arch near the Vardar Gate—a massive stone structure probably erected after the time of Vespasian— was destroyed about 1867 to furnish material for repairing the city walls; an imperfect inscription from it is now preserved in the British Museum. The other arch, popularly called the arch of Constantine, but by Leake assigned to the reign of Theodosius, consisted of three archways built of brick and faced with marble. It is now in a very dilapidated state. A third example of Roman architecture —the remains of a white marble portico supposed to have formed the entrance to the hippodrome—is known by the Judaeo-Spanish designation of Las Incantadas, from the eight Caryatides in the upper part of the structure. The conspicuous mosques of Salonica have nearly all an early Christian origin; the remarkable preservation of their mural decorations makes them very important for the history of Byzantine architecture. The principal are those dedicated to St Sophia, St George, and St Demetrius.

St Sophia (Aya Sofia), formerly the cathedral, and probably erected by Justinian’s architect Anthemius, was converted into a mosque in 1589. It is cased with slabs of white marble. The whole length of the interior is 110 feet. The nave, forming a Greek cross, is surmounted by a hemispherical dome, the 600 square yards of which are covered with a rich mosaic representing the Ascension. St Demetrius, which is probably older than the time of Justinian, consists of a long nave (divided into three bays by massive square piers) and two side aisles, each terminating eastward in an atrium the full height of the nave, in a style not known to occur in any other church. The columns of the aisles are half the height of those in the nave. The internal decoration is all produced by slabs of different-coloured marbles. St George’s, conjecturally assigned by Messrs Pullan and Texier to the reign of Constantine, is circular in plan, measuring internally 80 feet in diameter. The external wall is 18 feet thick, and at the angles of an inscribed octagon are chapels formed in the thickness of the wall, and roofed with waggon-headed vaults visible on the exterior; the eastern chapel, however, is enlarged and developed into a bema and apse projecting beyond the circle, and the western and southern chapels constitute the two entrances of the building. The dome, 72 yards in circumference, is covered throughout its entire surface of 800 square yards with what is the largest work in ancient mosaic that has come down to us, representing a series of fourteen saints standing in the act of adoration in front of temples and colonnades. The Eski Juma, or Old Mosque, is another interesting basilica, evidently later than Constantine, with side aisles and. an apse without side chapels. The church of the Holy Apostles and that of St Elias also deserve mention. Of the secular buildings, the Caravanserai, usually attributed to Amurath II., probably dates from Byzantine times.

The prosperity of Salonica has all along been largely that of a commercial city. During the Christian centuries before the Mohammedan conquest the patron saint of the city was also the saint of a great market or fair to which merchants came from all parts of the Mediterranean, and even from countries beyond the Alps. At the beginning of the present century a large export trade was carried on in woollen and cotton fabrics, white and red yarns, grain, wool, tobacco, yellow berries, silk fabrics, sponges, &c.; and silk gauze was manufactured in the city. Direct British trade with Salonica began after the Greek war of independence. Woven fabrics are at present imported from England, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy; sugar mainly from Austria; coffee from South America (partly direct); petroleum from America and Russia; soap from Greece and Crete; metal goods from England, France, and Austria; and coal from England. The exports com- prise cereals (wheat, barley, oats, maize, rye), tobacco, wool, cotton, poppy seed, opium, cocoons, prunes, and timber. In 1884 the industrial establishments were steam flour-mills, a cottonspinning factory (employing 500 hands and sending its goods to Constantinople, Smyrna, and Beyrout), a distillery, several large soap-works, a nail factory, an iron-bedstead factory, and a number of brick and tile works.

In Salonica the several nationalities have schools of their own: the Greeks, for example, have a normal school, a gymnasium, and nine other schools (one for girls); and even the Bulgarians, though their members are comparatively small, have two normal schools. The Jewish community (about 50,000) is of Spanish origin, and still preserves its Judaeo-Spanish written in Hebrew characters. Besides their own schools they have the advantage of a large school supported by the Jewish Mission of the Established Church of Scotland (instituted about 1860). The total population of Salonica was estimated by Tozer about 1865 as 60,000. It has since increased probably to 90,000 or 100,000. The railway opened to Kiuprili (136¾ miles) in 1873 is now extended 75 miles to Mitrovitza.

History.— The older name of Thessalonica was Therma (in allusion to the hot-springs of the neighbourhood). It was a military and commercial station on a main line of communication between Rome and the East, and had reached its zenith before the seat of empire was transferred to Constantinople. It became a Roman colonia in the middle of the 3d century, and in the later defence of the ancient civilization against the barbarian inroads it played a considerable part. In 390 Thessalonica was the scene of the dreadful massacre perpetrated by command of Theodosius. Constantine repaired the port, and probably enriched the town with some of its buildings. During the iconoclastic reigns of terror it stood on the defensive, and succeeded in saving the artistic treasures of its churches: in the 9th century Joseph, one of its bishops, died in chains for his defence of image-worship. In the 7th century the Slavonic tribes strove to capture the city, but in vain even when it was thrown into confusion by a terrible earthquake which lasted several days. It was the attempt made to transfer the whole Bulgarian trade to Thessalonica that in the close of the 9th century caused the invasion of the empire by Simeon of Bulgaria. In 904 the Saracens from the Cyrenaica took the place by storm; the public buildings were grievously injured, and the inhabitants to the number of 22,000 were carried off and sold as slaves throughout the countries of the Mediterranean. In 1185 the Normans of Sicily, having landed at Dyrrliachium and marched across country, took Thessalonica after a ten days’ siege, and perpetrated endless barbarities, of which Eustathius, then bishop of the see, has left us an account. In 1204 Baldwin, conqueror of Constantinople, conferred the kingdom of Thessalonica on Boniface, marquis of Montferrat; but eighteen years later Theodore, despot of Epirus, one of the natural enemies of the new kingdom, took the city and had himself there crowned by the patriarch of Macedonian Bulgaria. On the death of Demetrius (who had been supported in his endeavour to recover his father’s throne by Pope Honorius III.) the empty title of king of Salonica was adopted by several claimants. In 1266 the house of Burgundy received a grant of the titular kingdom from Baldwin II. when he was titular emperor, and it was sold by Eudes IV. to Philip of Tarentum, titular emperor of Romania in 1320. The Venetians, to whom the city was transferred by one of the Palaeologi, were in power when Sultan Amurath appeared, and on the 1st of May 1430, in spite of the desperate resistance of the inhabitants, took the city, which had thrice previously been in the hands of the Turks. The body of St Demetrius, the patron saint, who from the time of his death under Maximian in the 4th century had exercised a marvellous influence on the popular imagination, was hacked to pieces, though even the Mohammedans attributed virtue to the famous oil from which the saint obtained the title of Myroblete. In 1876 the French and German consuls at Thessalonica were massacred by the Turkish populace.

Besides Tafel’s monograph, Dissertatio de Thetsalonica (Berlin, 1839), see Holland's Travels (1815); Grisebaeh, Rumelien und Brussa, 1839; Bowen’s Mount Athos, Thessaly, and Epirus (1852); Boeckh, C. I. G., vol. ii.; Texier and Fullan, Byzantine Architecture (1864); Tozer, Highlands of Turkey, 1869.