Salonica, or SALONIKI (Turk. Selanik), the second commercial city of European Turkey, next after Constantinople, stands at the head of the Gulf of Salonica, and since 1889 has been connected by rail with Belgrade via Usküb and Nisch, and so has direct railway communication with Vienna (820 miles distant). The city climbs up the rocky heights that stretch back from the shore, and is overlooked by a citadel, the ancient acropolis. From the sea it has a fine appearance, being surrounded with white walls, 5 miles in circumference, and having its houses and mosques embowered in trees of dark foliage. The streets previous to 1889 were narrow, rough, and dirty; since that year they have been widened and excellently paved and drained. The principal buildings of interest are the mosques, which were, most of them, Christian churches, and preserve on their walls many valuable evidences of Byzantine art. St Sophia, modelled after its namesake at Constantinople, built in Justinian's reign, and a mosque since 1589, is shaped like a Greek cross and surmounted by a dome covered with mosaics. In the great fire of September 3-4, 1890, which did £800,000 worth of damage to the town, it was a good deal injured, but not irreparably, though the archives were burned. St George, dating probably from the time of Constantine, is circular in form; its dome too is covered with fine mosaics, which were spoilt greatly when the church (mosque) was 'restored' in 1889. St Demetrius (7th century) is decorated internally with slabs of different coloured marble. The Old Mosque was anciently a temple of Venus. Here is the propylæum of the hippodrome in which Theodosius in 390 ordered the massacre of 7000 of the citizens of Salonica. The Via Egnatia, the great high-road from the Adriatic coast (i.e. from Rome) to Byzantium, passes through this city. Its entrance and exit were marked by handsome Roman arches, of which that at the west end was taken down in 1867; the other, the arch of Constantine, at the east end, still stands, but in a ruinous condition. The commerce of the port is steadily increasing, especially since the opening of the railway to Servia. The imports, consisting chiefly of metal wares, textiles, coffee, petroleum, salt, sugar, rice, and soap, reach an annual average of £1,377,000. The exports—corn, cotton, opium, wool, tobacco, skins, silk cocoons, &c.—average £1,400,000. One-third of the total maritime trade (1,500,000 tons in and out) is in the hands of Great Britain. The native industries include the manufacture of cotton, flour, soap, bricks, leather, silk, and carpets. Pop. (1890) estimated at 121,600, of whom nearly 61,000 were Jews of Spanish descent, 25,000 Turks, and 14,000 Greeks.
Salonica is the ancient Thessalonica, to whose Christian community St Paul addressed the two Epistles to the Thessalonians. At this city too Cicero dwelt when he withdrew from Rome after the suppression of the Catiline conspiracy. Thessalonica was built by Cassander about 315 B.C. on the site of an older city named Therme, and was called after his wife, sister of Alexander the Great. It soon became a place of importance as the principal harbour of Macedonia, and later was the chief station on the Via Egnatia. Under the Byzantine emperors it successfully withstood the Goths and the Slavs, but was captured by Moslems from Africa in 904, when they carried away 22,000 of its people into slavery, and by the Normans of South Italy in 1185. After several changes the city passed into the hands of the Venetians, and from them the Turks took it in 1430.