Thessaloniki
Second city, first-rate charm
Michael Church
One by one the great cities of Europe are taking their turn as cultural capital. Some — like Glasgow — wear the crown with a swagger, others make a complete hash of it. This year it is Thessaloniki's turn: Greece's second city — which most tourists only glimpse on their airborne dash to the sun — is to be 'discovered' at last. It was once the southernmost stop on the Orient Express, but the smart set could never get to grips with it: predominantly Jewish, ruled until 1912 by Turks, it fitted `You invited them to dinner . . . you tell them to leave.'
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no known category. The Nazis did their gruesome best to clarify things, siphoning off the Jewish population to Auschwitz, but even in Auschwitz the Thessalonians were a conundrum. In Primo Levi's majestic and terrible memoir If This Is a Man, the Jews from Salonica are a breed apart: the tough- est and most resourceful people in the camp, Asiatically mysterious.
Which is how this beautiful, ramshackle, pullulating city strikes me today. Much of its chaos is due to last-minute primpings for the cultural-capital party: Roman arch- es are swaddled in wraps, mosques nestle in scaffolding, Byzantine churches suddenly look spanking new. Wandering into the neo-Byzantine cathedral, one see newness unfold before the eyes. An army of artists are painting frescos on hitherto plain walls: fresh frescos, in acrylic colours and acres of gold leaf, but in an antique style. A shiny- eyed executant explains that these will be the equal of the celebrated frescos of Mount Athos — no, they will be better! But he and his friends must hurry to meet the deadline set by the bishop. Then I run into an architect who is so angry he can hardly speak: that bishop is a vandal, he thunders.
Then he takes me on a whistle-stop tour of new projects: a gorgeous 19th-century mosque built for Jewish converts to Islam, which is now an art gallery; a textile factory destined to become the city's museum of modern art; a monastery being transformed into a cultural centre; a mediaeval Turkish bath which is now a theatre; a new museum area in the port. The Roman forum, whose streets and arcades are still in strikingly good condition, is to be opened this year to the public as an archaeological 'work in progress'. The new Jewish museum is the biggest coup of all, brought off in the teeth of opposition from the mayor.
On the ramparts overlooking the city I encounter another conundrum. Conserva- tionists, architects and historians have been fighting for years over what should be done with the 'prison', where Turks built over what Christians had added to an original Roman fort. This, says its keeper, was where political prisoners languished under the Nazis, and more recently under the Colonels. Poems and novels have been written here: it's part of Greece's folklore. Those who want to strip it down are losing ground to those who want to keep it exactly as it is. The last inmates' pin-ups still flutter from the dormitory walls; if one falls off, it's lovingly glued back on. This is Thessa- loniki's 'penal museum'.
In the old town within the ramparts one can wander for hours. With its collapsing wooden houses, colonies of cats and chick- ens, and washing blowing in the wind, it has a particular charm. Tiny Byzantine church- es come like rewards on a treasure-hunt: two women cleaning St Nikolaos Orfanos (an exquisite jungle of 15th-century fres- cos) insist I share their breakfast of bread and olives; the one-eyed custodian of Ossios David (with its 5th-century mosaics) invites an arm-wrestle, which he wins, before letting me in.
But this is a university town as well as a trading port, and its market streets are studded with tavernas where the food is Middle-Eastern rather than Greek, and served in heroic portions. Papers are read, backgammon is played, everyone smokes. Teenagers devour magazines called Flash and Out! — ultra-macho, nothing to do with gays — and hang out in a converted flour mill which has become the cool-dude Mecca of northern Greece. Monks on brief excursions from their bastion on Mount Athos hurry about; people cross themselves automatically when passing wayside shrines; religion is alive and kick- ing. The centrepiece of this year's celebra- tions, to be unveiled in June, is an exhibition of the treasures of Mount Athos, making their first ever foray into the secular world.
Thessaloniki's archaeological museum, meanwhile, contains gold by the kilo, worked with filigree precision, from the royal tombs at nearby Vergina. And the excavations at Vergina are exhilarating. On Philip of Macedon's tomb the paint is still fresh, and there are signs of indecent haste in its completion; the sponge which was used to clean the blood from his corpse lurks in a fridge. Driving through the plains around the city, I pass dozens of man-made tumuli. Some are being excavated by dogged teams of Brits and Germans, others hold their antique secrets intact.
And the beaches? Well, nobody swims in the bay on which the city stands, because the water is horribly polluted. When the sun is out, I head down the middle leg of the Halkidiki peninsula, find an empty stretch of sand and blue sea, and contem- plate the holy mount from afar.
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