A side of the city that nobody knows, talks about or sees. Myths and Legends of Thessaloniki

Thessaloniki is not what it seems. It’s not just a town with history, beautiful old buildings and colourful sunsets. This city has secret sights, street names that hide mystical stories, weird symbols, underground networks and secrets paths, abandoned buildings that no one renovates or demolishes, haunted houses and so much more.

The haunted building

Mauricio Santos-Lobos in his book The Spider Glyph in Time compares the way cities are built with the structure of the human brain. “The city is nothing more than the three-dimensional architecture of the brain.” he believes. As he describes “The labyrinths of the city form an architectural hieroglyph, an invisible symbol used in a variety of ways, unconsciously by the tenants, consciously by their secret supervisors and by the pirates connected to the system.” 1 I am considering myself as a part of the tenants since I never attempted to discover any of the following mysteries but what I am going to attempt with this article is to unfold some of the most known secrets of the city. 1 https://www.e-telescope.gr/mystery/secret-salonica

Beginning with Vasilissis Olgas 261-263, there is one thing everyone can be sure about. Nobody would like to declare it as a place of their residence. It is the address of an old eclectic building that has a mystery wrapped around it. It was built in 1919 and the first years of its existence it functioned as a casino which attracted a large amount of Jews. After that, during the occupation, this building was used by Germans as a place of torture for Jews. Thus, people believe it was dominated by negative energy. There are some incidents that come to reinforce that belief. In the 1980s a contractor undertook to demolish it. But after a few days, he died under uncertain circumstances. It is said that ever since then every time someone wants to re-

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build it, the person gets hurt. These events have led the public opinion arguing firmly that the building is haunted. Many stories come to add to the timeline of this building. Until today, stories continue to come to light with strange noises and screams being heard from its empty rooms and flashing lights seen from its broken windows. 2 Our second mystical destination is the Pasa Gardens or Drakospita (Dragonhouses). It’s an open-air garden located nearby St. Paul’s church and Agios Dimitrios hospital. The name probably came due to locals’ stories that it was used as a hideout from the Seifullah Pasha, a Turkish mercenary. As you enter and walk through the area you can observe a strange and enchanting architecture that strongly resembles Antoni Gaudi’s architecture in Barcelona. There are many things that have been said about this place. For example, it is believed that it was a meeting place for the Ottoman Masons and 2 https://paranormap.net/article/10742 The gate that leads nowhere

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that there were the borders of the catacombs of Thessaloniki that ended up there. Also, the stone constructions have strange symbols as well as animals and plants figures. And there is a gate that leads nowhere. This site, on the whole, is believed to have a strong “geomagnetic field”. Some people believe that occult ceremonies and human scarification took place there on occasions. But the fact that it was built on old cemeteries is enough to make you feel weird when you are there. 3

Next stop Mavris Petras (Black Stone) street, in Ano Poli. In 1917, when the city was burned, a black stone was found in the bottom of a crater nearby. The stone was made of iron and probably came from the space. This is why this road is believed to be on a magnetic field and therefore to have a time-space gate. Even though there were 3 https://www.womantoc.gr/life/article/oi-kipoi-tou-pasasti-thessaloniki-kai-oi-astikoi-mythoi-pou-mas-kanoun-naanatrixiazoume

no houses in the neighbourhood when that happened, as they were built, the narrow street was called Mavris Petras because of the incident. The myth says, that this street is a dead-end and that every 3 or 15 days, at midnight, for 15 minutes a gate opens and you can pass through it. If you pass it without realizing it you will be trapped in its streets without having a clue where you are and no longer be able to find a way out of it. Last but definitely not least, is the city under the city, a whole world that remains in the dark. From the Hellenistic era, a network of galleries was created under Thessaloniki, mostly for military purposes. A large arcade started from Eptapirgio (Kastra), was passing through the area near the Church of the Twelve Apostles and ended at the port. Another started from the northwestern part of the city walls, passed through today’s Administration of Macedonia and Thrace and ended up in the sea. The Romans expanded these two arcades and created parallel networks. Later, the Christians, who used these galleries as a meeting place for secret worship, created even more complex networks. This resulted in the creation of a huge network of arcades and catacombs beneath the city, whose exits exist in almost all the early Christian churches of the city. 4 By using these exits the Byzantine emperors were able to impress the crowd. While attending a church ceremony, with no one to see them leave, they appeared in another. Thus, they created legends around their name that they might be double-headed. 5 It is unknown how many and what pieces of this underground city have managed to avoid the devastation of the uncontrolled construction of the ’50s and ’60s. Some interesting findings that have come to light show that there is still a large part of the network of galleries beneath the city.

Concluding, as this short journey of the mystical places and stories of Thessaloniki, the urban myths and legends, is coming to an end I would like to remind you that a city is a living organism that has its own shadows and bright sides, just like human beings. Both of them are equally important. I hope everything you read about Thessaloniki in this article will not scare you but on the opposite make you love it even more. 4 St. Demetrius, St. Sophia, St. David, ect. 5 http://www.pass2greece.gr/afieroma_det.asp?afieroma_ id=123&nid=8

Mavri Petra street

© Kia Tzimou