If you’re going to splurge anywhere in Northern Greece, Thessaloniki (thess-ah-lo-nee-kih) is the place to do it. Greece’s second city, and its cultural capital, Thessaloniki (also called Salonica) lets you indulge in fine food, sinful sweets, ultra-chic shopping, an energetic nightlife and more concerts, parties, art shows and events than you can keep track of.

What really enhances Thessaloniki’s hip atmosphere, however, are the enduring symbols of its glorious history, from the White Tower on its café-lined waterfront all the way up to the Byzantine walls, just above the Upper Town (Ano Poli), an enchanting neighbourhood of pretty traditional houses set on winding, peaceful alleyways. Down from them are impressive constructions like the 4th-century Church of Agios Dimitrios (said to be the largest in Greece), the enormous Roman Rotunda, and the sculpted Arch of Galerius in Kamara, thronged with students from Thessaloniki’s universities.

Indeed, Thessaloniki’s multitude of young people gives it a vivacious, stylish mood, which can be felt in its cafés, restaurants and bars, even in its shops and designer hair salons. Still livable and relatively small, Thessaloniki has none of Athens’ opprobrious traffic or smog. True, it’s no budget destination, but Thessaloniki is packed with life and should be on every traveller’s itinerary.

The city was founded around 315 BC by the King Cassander of Macedon, on or near the site of the ancient town of Therma and twenty-six other local villages He named it after his wife Thessalonike, a half-sister of Alexander the Great (Thessalo-nikē means the " Thessalian victory") (See Battle of Crocus field). It was an autonomous part of the Kingdom of Macedon. After the fall of the kingdom of Macedon in 168 BC, Thessalonica became a city of the Roman Republic. It grew to be an important trade-hub located on the Via Egnatia and facilitating trade between Europe and Asia. The city became the capital of one of the four Roman districts of Macedonia.

When in 379 the Roman Prefecture of Illyricum was divided between East and West Roman Empires, Thessaloníki became the capital of the new Prefecture of Illyricum. The economic expansion of the city continued through the twelfth century as the rule of the Komnenoi emperors expanded Byzantine control to the north. Thessaloniki passed out of Byzantine hands in 1204, when Constantinople was captured by the Fourth Crusade. Thessaloníki and its surrounding territory—the Kingdom of Thessalonica—became the largest fief of the Latin Empire. It also was ruled by the Despotate of Epirus between 1224 and 1246 and was a vassal state of the Second Bulgarian Empire between 1230 and 1246. The city was recovered by the Byzantine Empire in 1246. In the 1340s, it was the scene of the anti-aristocratic Commune of the Zealots. In 1423, the Byzantines sold the city to Venice, which held the city until it was captured by the Ottoman Sultan Murad II on 29 March 1430.

During the Ottoman period, the city's Muslim and Jewish population grew. By 1478 Selânik (سلانیك) – as the city came to be known in Ottoman Turkish – had a population of 4,320 Muslims and 6,094 Greek Orthodox, as well as some Catholics, but no Jews. By ca. 1500, the numbers had grown to 7,986 Greeks, 8,575 Muslims, and 3,770 Jews, but by 1519, the latter numbered 15,715, 54% of the city's population. The invitation of the Sephardic Jews expelled from Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella, was an Ottoman demographic strategy aiming to prevent the Greek element from dominating the city. The city remained the largest Jewish city in the world for at least two centuries, often called "Mother of Israel." Selanik was a sanjak capital in Rumeli Eyaleti until 1826, and subsequently the capital of Selanik Vilayeti (between 1826 and 1864 Selanik Eyaleti), which consisted of the sanjaks of Selanik, Serez and Drama between 1826 and 1912.

From 1870, driven by economic growth, the city's population expanded by 70%, reaching 135,000 in 1917.

During the First Balkan War, on 26 October 1912 (Old Style), the feast day of the city's patron saint, Saint Demetrius, the Ottoman garrison surrendered Salonica to the Greek Army without any resistance. In 1915, during World War I, a large Allied expeditionary force landed at Thessaloniki as the base for operations against pro-German Bulgaria, which ended in the establishment of the Macedonian or Salonika Front. In 1916, pro-Venizelist Greek army officers, with the support of the Allies, launched the Movement of National Defence, which resulted in the establishment of a pro-Allied temporary government that controlled northern Greece and the Aegean, against the official government of the King in Athens. This led the city to be dubbed as symprotévousa ("co-capital"). Most of the old town was destroyed by a single fire on 18 August [O.S. 5 August] 1917, which was accidentally sparked by French soldiers in encampments at the city. The fire left some 72,000 homeless, many of them Turkish, of a population of approximately 271,157 at the time.

Thessaloniki fell to the forces of Nazi Germany on April 22, 1941, and remained under German occupation until October 30, 1944. The city suffered considerable damage from Allied bombing. In 1943, 50,000 of the city's Jews were sent to the gas chambers. Eleven thousand Jews were deported to forced labor camps, most of whom perished. One survivor was Salamo Arouch, a boxing champion, who survived Auschwitz by entertaining the Nazis with his boxing skills.

Thessaloniki was rebuilt after the war with large-scale development of new infrastructure and industry throughout the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. On 20 June, 1978, the city was hit by a powerful earthquake, registering a moment magnitude of 6.5. The tremor caused considerable damage to several buildings and ancient monuments; forty people were crushed to death when an entire apartment block collapsed in the central Hippodromio district.

Early Christian and Byzantine monuments of Thessaloniki were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1988, and Thessaloniki later became European Capital of Culture 1997. In 2004 the city hosted a number of the football events forming part of the 2004 Summer Olympics.