The area covered by the present day Prefecture of Thessaloniki has been inhabited since Prehistoric times.  After the founding of the City of Thessaloniki, this region’s history has become identical to that of the city’s, which has been especially rich, thereby attracting many conquerors and, at times, reaching enviable peaks of prosperity.

Thessaloniki was founded in 316 BC on the site of the old city of Thermi, which gave its name to the Thermaic Gulf.  Kassandros, its founder, gave it the name of his consort, Thessaloniki, half-sister to Alexander the Great.

Thessaloniki, with its rapid development and growth due to its ideal geographical position, became the capital of the Macedonian state, thus taking leadership away from Pella.  Pella, the birth city of Macedonian Kings, eventually fell into such obscurity that archaeologists are still uncertain of its actual position on the map.

Today the city is best known as a Byzantine city, due to the wealth of its art and architecture, remains from the centuries when Thessaloniki was second only to Constantinople.

Recent archaeological excavations at Derveni and Vergina (site of King Philip's tomb) have turned up such remarkable artefacts from the Macedonian period that we consider Thessaloniki most notable for its Archaeological Museum and nearby sites:

Vergina:  The wealth of gold funerary objects discovered at Vergina has no limit to the appraisal of their value.  The royal tomb and royal palace near the village of Vergina impart a thrilling impression to visitors, and their archaeological importance is second only to the Acropolis of Athens.
Dion:  About 80 kilometers from Thessaloniki, at the foot of the magnificent Mount Olympus, is the village of Dion.  Recent excavations have revealed that this was an important religious center for worship of the gods of the sacred mount.  Much progress has been made with the excavations in recent years, filling the new museum with some very fine works of Art.

In history there are few persons who can be termed “Great,” and even fewer who deserve to be so named.  But Alexander, the son of Philippos, King of Macedonians, was truly great.  He did not merely place his stamp on his era; rather, he has survived - he still "lives and reigns," according to popular belief.  Alexander was a cultural reformer, not a military invader.  He instituted a multinational state comprised of equally privileged individuals, for he was a liberator and not an enslaver.  The peoples who became part of his empire were not considered minorities but retained their national identities.

The campaigns of Alexander the Great signaled some momentous events in world history that should be accessed in ways other than on celluloid from the back lots of Hollywood!  On one hand, Europe was decidedly alleviated from the Asian threat, as the vast Persian superpower was dismantled forever.  And on the other, the expansion and eventual domination of the Greek language as the international form of communication, with its concomitant knowledge, philosophy, art, and civilization, were extraordinary events of immense consequence for the future course of the entire world.

We have to agree with H. Bengston that “Neither the Roman empire, nor the triumphant route of Christianity - whose communities, at the end of ancient times, extended from Ireland to India - nor even the Byzantine Empire nor the Arabian civilization would have been created without Alexander the Great and his cosmogony works.”  Nevertheless, anyone with even rudimentary historical knowledge is aware of what Macedonian Hellenism and its genuine representatives, Philip, Alexander, and Aristotle, symbolize and embody.  In history and in thought, it is this golden civilization that is an inseparable segment of the grand Greek miracle.

Among the numerous monuments of particular interest in the city are those from the Roman period, the Triumphal Arch of Galerius and the Rotonda.  The Byzantine period bequeathed to the city many churches, whose fine mosaics and wall paintings are representative of various periods of Byzantine art, and which significantly contribute to the city’s image.  They include St. Demetrius, Panagia Acheiropoietus, the Holy Apostles, St. Sophia, St. Catherine, Panagia Chalkeon, St. Nicholas the Orphan, the Prophet Elijah, and the Monastery of Vlatadon.  Large sections of the city-walls still stand, together with one of their main bastions, the well-known White Tower.  Noteworthy also, from a national, spiritual and artistic viewpoint, are the continuing strong links between the city of Thessaloniki and Mt. Athos, the, so-called among Christians, Sacred Mountain.