Perceptions, histories and urban realities of Thessaloniki’s layered past

Commanding the Thermaic Gulf and the northern Aegean beyond it, Thessaloniki is a dense, sprawling modern city whose layered past continues to reverberate throughout its long and continuous history.¹ The physical remains of Thessaloniki’s past constitute an integral part of its contemporary urban fabric as they contain aspects of the socio-economic networks, the cultural identity and the lived experience of its former inhabitants. The ancient and medieval formation of Mediterranean cities, including Thessaloniki, shaped their subsequent layered growth and spatially framed the experience of urban life through time. Consequently, as the stratigraphy of cities keeps growing, the surviving parts of