Thessaloniki

Thessaloniki ; , Saloniki or Salonica is the second-largest city in Greece, with over 1 million inhabitants in its metropolitan area, together with the capital of a geographic region of Macedonia, the administrative region of Central Macedonia together with the Decentralized administration of Macedonia and Thrace. it is for also call in Greek as η Συμπρωτεύουσα , literally "the co-capital", a mention to its historical status as the Συμβασιλεύουσα or "co-reigning" city of the Byzantine Empire alongside Constantinople.

Thessaloniki is located on the Thermaic Gulf, at the northwest corner of the Aegean Sea. it is bounded on the west by the delta of the Axios. The municipality of Thessaloniki, the historical center, had a population of 325,182 in 2011, while the Thessaloniki metropolitan area had 1,030,338 inhabitants in 2011. It is Greece’smajor economic, industrial, commercial and political centre; it is a major transportation hub for Greece and southeastern Europe, notably through the Port of Thessaloniki. The city is renowned for its festivals, events and vibrant cultural life in general, and is considered to be Greece's cultural capital. Events such as the Thessaloniki International Fair and the Thessaloniki International Film Festival are held annually, while the city also hosts the largest bi-annual meeting of the Greek diaspora. Thessaloniki was the 2014 European Youth Capital.

The city was founded in 315 BC by Cassander of Macedon, who named it after his wife Thessalonike, daughter of Philip II of Macedon and sister of Alexander the Great. An important metropolis by the Roman period, Thessaloniki was thelargest and wealthiest city of the Byzantine Empire. It was conquered by the Ottomans in 1430 and remained an important seaport and multi-ethnic metropolis during the most five centuries of Turkish rule. It passed from the Ottoman Empire to the Kingdom of Greece on 8 November 1912. Thessaloniki exhibits Byzantine architecture, including numerous Paleochristian and Byzantine monuments, a World Heritage Site, as well as several Roman, Ottoman and Sephardic Jewish structures. The city's leading university, Aristotle University, is the largest in Greece and the Balkans.

Thessaloniki is a popular tourist destination in Greece. In 2013, National Geographic Magazine refers Thessaloniki in its top tourist destinations worldwide, while in 2014 Financial Times FDI magazine Foreign Direct Investments declared Thessaloniki as the best mid-sized European city of the future for human capital and lifestyle.

Names and etymology

The original name of the city was Θεσσαλονίκη . It was named after the princess Thessalonike of Macedon, the half sister of Alexander the Great, whose score means "Thessalian victory", from Thessalos, and 'victory' Nike, honoring the Macedonian victory at the Battle of Crocus Field 353/352 BC.

Minor variants are also found, including Θετταλονίκη , Θεσσαλονίκεια , Θεσσαλονείκη , and Θεσσαλονικέων .

The name Σαλονίκη is first attested in Greek in the Chronicle of the Morea 14th century, and is common in folk songs, but it must have originated earlier, as al-Idrisi called it Salunik already in the 12th century. It is the basis for the city's name in other languages: Солѹнъ Solunŭ in Old Church Slavonic, סאלוניקו in Judeo-Spanish, סלוניקי in Hebrew, سلانیك Selânik in Ottoman Turkish and in modern Turkish, in Italian, Solun or Солун in the local and neighboring South Slavic languages, Салоники Saloníki in Russian, and Sãrunã in Aromanian.

In English, the city can be called Thessaloniki, Salonika, Thessalonica, Salonica, Thessalonika, Saloniki, Thessalonike, or Thessalonice. In printed texts, the near common name and spelling until the early 20th century was Thessalonica; through most of rest of the 20th century, it was Salonika. By approximately 1985, the most common single name became Thessaloniki. The forms with the Latin ending -a taken together keep on more common than those with the phonetic Greek ending -i and much more common than the ancient transliteration -e.

Thessaloniki was revived as the city's official name in 1912, when it joined the Kingdom of Greece during the Balkan Wars. In local speech, the city's name is typically pronounced with a dark and deep L characteristic of innovative Macedonian accent. The name is often abbreviated as Θεσ/νίκη.