Central Macedonia Greece – Where the local past becomes the global future

By Sofia Bournatzi

In the beginning of time, the mighty Gods dominated peoples’ lives from their divine Mount Olympus in the Pieria region. The highest Greek mountain, surrounded by lush forests and emerald sea, hides its peaks in the clouds. People from all over the ancient world visited to pray and honor the twelve Olympian Gods. The ruler of the land around Mount Olympus was the King of Macedonia. The first kingdom’s capital was Aigai, known today as Vergina in Imathia; the last was Pella. The Macedonian Royal Court hosted personalities such as Hippocrates and Euripides. In the 4th century BC, King Phillip II managed to expand the borders of the kingdom by conquering big parts of the rest of Greece. He invented many military tactics that are still taught today.

King Phillip II shaped the circumstances that allowed his son Alexander to become “Great.” The young prince had the best education. His father asked his friend Aristotle to teach Alexander and his friends. Aristotle was born in Stagira-Halkidiki and agreed under the terms that the King would rebuild his city that was destroyed after Phillip’s attack. Aristotle’s school was an open-air place in Mieza-Imathia. After Phillip’s assassination, Alexander became the king and left for his campaign from the port of Amphipolis in Serres.

Alexander died in Babylon at the age of 33. His vast empire was divided in four pieces and his generals became kings in each. One was King Ptolemy, the ancestor of Queen Cleopatra of Egypt. Another was King Cassander, the ruler of

Greece who married Alexander’s half-sister, Thessaloniki, and founded a city to honor her.

The rising of the Roman Empire established Thessaloniki as one of the political, intellectual and commercial centers. The city was in the heart of the ancient Via Egnatia that connected the eastern with the western part of Greece. Due to the high education of the residents, Paul, the Apostle of the Nations, chose them to preach the message of Christianity. The new religion was first accepted by the people of Veria, the capital of Imathia.

When the Romans transferred their capital from Rome to Constantinople, a new era had begun. The Byzantine Empire left its marks all over Greece. In Thessaloniki, a big number of monuments and churches of this period are today included in UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The monastic community of Mount Athos in Halkidiki recently celebrated 1000 years of continuous presence as the center of the Orthodox religion.

The importance of the region was significant also during the 500 years of Ottoman occupation, as towns and monuments prove. Although the region of Macedonia participated in the Greek Independence War of 1821, it wasn’t until 1912-1913 that it was liberated after a series of battles during the Balkan Wars.

The outbreak of WWI by the ENTENTE forces shaped a new front in Thessaloniki, the Macedonian Front. In 1916, more than 600,000 men from six armies — Greek, British, French, Russian, Serbian, and Italian — had camped outside the city of Thessaloniki and fought in the battlefields of Kilkis and Serres. The Battle of Skra di Legen in 1918 was the first victorious battle of the Allied Greece entered WWII in 1940, fighting Italy at the Greek-Albanian borders. The German army created a second front to invade from Bulgaria. The Greeks defended the borders from the fortifications of the “Metaxas Line” that was constructed a few months before the “Battle of the Forts” in Serres and Drama. The WWII circle of blood did not only cost the lives of the soldiers but destroyed villages and communities. The worst act was the extermination of almost 50.000 people from the Jewish Community of Thessaloniki and some thousands from Veria and Serres.

So many things have happened in Central Macedonia, Greece through centuries. People learned in time how to preserve their history, cherish their heritage, and revive their tradition. The cities, towns and villages were constructed over the buried past and are reformed for a sustainable future. The people are warm and hospitable, open to new ideas as they learned from the elders, who learned from Aristotle.

Photos, clockwise from bottom left: White Tower UNESCO Thessaloniki;WWI Interallied Memorial Kilki; Altar of St Paul Veria Imathia; Ancient Pella Archaeological Museum; Heroic City of Naoussa Park Imathia; Traditional boats Neos Marmaras Halkidiki; Ancient Stagira - Aristotle land Halkidiki