Panayia Acheiropoietos
Photo: Bgabel, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
A 5th-century church. The surviving original decoration includes fine 5th-century Ionian capitals, the green Thessalian marble columns of the tribelon and fragments of 5th-century decorative mosaics. Early 13th-century frescoes adorn the southern side.
The Church of the Acheiropoietos is a 5th-century Byzantine-era Greek Orthodox church, located in the city of Thessaloniki, Central Macedonia, in northern Greece. It is situated in the city's centre, at Agias Sofias street opposite Makedonomachon square. Because of its outstanding early Byzantine architecture, the church was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1988 along with other Paleochristian and Byzantine monuments of Thessaloniki.
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Agia Sofia
A church from the 7th century, based on the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, with mosaics from the 9th century.
A church built in the 14th century. Few of the building's original wall paintings survive, but its architecture is striking.
Ancient Agora
Excavations and an interesting museum underneath.
A 14th-century chapel.
An 11th-century church. The paintings are from the time the church was built, except a few from the 14th century.
Agios Demetrios
Constructed in the mid-7th century on the ruins of a Roman bath complex, in honor of Demetrius, a Roman officer who was imprisoned and martyred here in 303 AD. An earlier small church, built on the site of martyrdom, burned down during the earthquake of 620 and a new large basilica was erected at expenses of Leontius, the Byzantine prefect of Illyricum and the Bishop of Thessaloniki. The new church of S. Demetrios became one of the most famous centres of pilgrimage for Orthodox Christians until its Muslim conversion in 1492. In the Great Fire of Thessaloniki of 1917 the basilica was gutted. The work of restructuring the church lasted fifty years. Most of the ancient mosaics in the western wall and in the inner central aisle survived the heat from the fire.