THE CITY THAT FORGOT ITSELF

Iason Athanasiadis traces the tortured twentieth-century history of the once cosmopolitan but now very Greek city of Thessaloniki

GREEK FLAGS FLUTTER FROM APARTment blocks, Orthodox monks amble past statues of statesmen and freedom fighters along boulevards named after Byzantine emperors and saints. It is a normal weekday in modern Greece’s second-largest city. Fighter jets have been terrifying domestic animals and setting off car alarms with their high-speed passes during an airshow marking a national holiday, eliciting pride from most residents. So far, so national. In the amphitheatrical city’s upper neighbourhoods, a strange octagonal dome rises out of neglected Terpsitheas (“pleasantview”) square. A woman in her forties sits on a bench, fixing the shrine with her gaze. Just behind it, a man in his seventies sits on the elegantly-sculpted balcony of a villa. In a city once bustling with minarets and synagogues but now afflicted with amnesia over…

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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, March 2025

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