Солун

Thessaloniki was Byzantium's second city — the "co-reigning" city, symbasileuousa — and no place outside Istanbul keeps more of that world: fifteen of its churches and monuments, from the Rotunda's Roman dome to the mosaics of Hosios David, form a UNESCO ensemble of early Christian and Byzantine art. The White Tower on the seafront, an Ottoman round bastion, is the city's emblem; behind it climbs Ano Poli, the upper town that survived the great fire of 1917, which otherwise remade the centre on elegant French plans. For four and a half centuries this was also one of the great Jewish cities of the world — Sephardic Thessaloniki, the "Mother of Israel" — until the deportations of 1943, a memory the city now keeps with museums and monuments, as it must.

The refugees of 1922 brought rebetiko to its port taverns, and the city has been Greece's musical counter-capital ever since — grittier, closer to the Balkans, proud of its songwriters. The formal establishment is substantial: the Thessaloniki Concert Hall on the seafront, its second auditorium designed by Arata Isozaki, and the Thessaloniki State Symphony Orchestra, founded in 1959 — both documented in the concert record, alongside the historic YMCA hall. Add the November film festival, the Dimitria celebrations and a street-food culture of national renown, and the co-reigning city still reigns — over the north, and over dinner.