Thessaloniki (or Salonica) (also known as Saloniki, Salonika, Thessalonica, Thessalonika, Thessalonike, or, Thessalonice) is the second-largest city in Greece, and, 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 city was founded in 315 BC by Cassander of Macedon, who named it after his wife Thessalonike. An important metropolis by the Roman period, Thessaloniki was the second largest 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 nearly five centuries of Turkish rule. It passed from the Ottoman Empire to the Kingdom of Greece on 8 November 1912.

Soon after the turn of the 15th to 16th century, however, nearly 20,000 Sephardic Jews immigrated to Greece from the Iberian Peninsula following their expulsion from Spain by the 1492 Alhambra Decree. By c. 1500, the number of households had grown to 7,986 Greek ones, 8,575 Muslim ones, and 3,770 Jewish. By 1519, Sephardic Jewish households numbered 15,715, 54% of the city's population. The city became both the largest Jewish city in the world and the only Jewish majority city in the world in the 16th century. As a result, Thessaloniki attracted persecuted Jews from all over the world. Many of whom spoke Ladino or Judeo-Spanish.

In the early 20th century, Thessaloniki was in the center of radical activities by various groups; the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization, founded in 1897, and the Greek Macedonian Committee, founded in 1903. In 1903, an anarchist group known as the Boatmen of Thessaloniki planted bombs in several buildings in Thessaloniki, including the Ottoman Bank, with some assistance from the IMRO. The Greek consulate in Ottoman Thessaloniki (now the Museum of the Macedonian Struggle) served as the center of operations for the Greek guerillas. Thessaloniki was also the center of activities of the Young Turks, a political reform movement, which goal was to replace the Ottoman Empire's absolute monarchy with a constitutional government. In 1908, they started the Young Turk Revolution from the city of Thessaloniki, which lead to of them gaining control over the Ottoman Empire and put an end to the Ottoman sultans power.

In 1922 a population exchange took place between Greece and Turkey. This made the Greek element dominant, while the Jewish population was reduced to a minority for the first time since the 14th century. During World War II it fell to the forces of Nazi Germany on 8 April 1941 and went under German occupation. Of the 45,000 Jews deported to Auschwitz, only 4% survived.

After the war, Thessaloniki was rebuilt with large-scale development of new infrastructure and industry. Today, Thessaloniki has become one of the most important trade and business hubs in Southeastern Europe, with its port, the Port of Thessaloniki being one of the largest in the Aegean and facilitating trade throughout the Balkan hinterland. A stereotypical Thessalonian coffee drink is Frappé coffee. Frappé was invented in the Thessaloniki International Fair in 1957 and has since spread throughout Greece and Cyprus to become a hallmark of the Greek coffee culture.

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