What makes Thessaloniki such a unique city? New yet already classic, this study seeks the answer in the five hundred years of its modern history, during which it emerged first as an Ottoman and later as a Greek metropolis.

During the same period, it was also a Jewish city, a refuge for thousands of Sephardim who were hunted from the Spanish Inquisition. Christians, Muslims, and Jews thus formed one of the most diverse societies in the Mediterranean and Europe.

Reviving this lost world masterfully, the author leads us among crumbling Roman arches, Byzantine churches, and Turkish mosques, into the taverns and hammams, the gardens, the palaces, and the brothels of the old city; where Egyptian traders and Ukrainian slaves, Turkish pashas and European travelers intersected with Orthodox pilgrims, Catholic missionaries, Spanish-speaking rabbis, and Sufi dervishes, as well as Albanian bandits and spies of the Great Powers.

Everyday life and ethnic and religious interaction are themes that Mazower thoroughly investigates before showing how the fate of the city changes in the twentieth century, with the collapse of the empire and the emergence of nation-states.

War, fire, refugee crises, genocide, and Holocaust radically transform Thessaloniki, which first loses its Muslims through population exchanges, and then its Jews on the way to Auschwitz. What slowly emerges from the ashes is a modern, dynamic Greek "co-capital."

However, the atmosphere of the city is still haunted by the ghosts of the great historical communities that shared it, by the adventures of the peoples and individuals who met in its tumultuous history. This book is dedicated to their vibrant memory.