The fire that broke out on the afternoon of August 18, 1917 in Thessaloniki was one of the most horrendous events that took place in the city, and changed its history forever.
The fire, as it emerged from the investigation conducted by the judicial authorities of Thessaloniki, started on Saturday August 18, 1917 at 3 o'clock in the afternoon from a poor house of refugees who were frying eggplants, in the Mevlane district between the center and the Upper Town. The spark fell into an adjacent straw warehouse and in a short time due to the strong wind the fire spread to the neighboring houses. The lack of water and the indifference of the neighbors did not make it possible to extinguish the initial fire, which began to spread throughout Thessaloniki.
The fire flattened within 32 hours the area between Agios Dimitrios, Agia Sofia, Egnatia, Ethniki Amynis, Nikis Avenue and northwest of Leotons Sofos. Within 32 hours, 9,500 houses on an area of 1,000,000 m² burned and more than 70,000 people were left homeless. Testimonies speak of scenes of bewilderment on Egnatia Street, people desperately trying to save themselves from the collapsing roofs, running towards the port.
Included among buildings that were burned were the Post Office, the telegraph office, the town hall, the water supply, and gas company headquarters, the Ottoman Bank, the National Bank of Greece, the deposits of the Bank of Athens, parts of the Saint Demetrius church, the monastery of Saint Theodora and another church, the Saatli Mosque, 11 other mosques, the seat of the chief rabbi with all its archive, 16 of the 33 synagogues, and the printing-houses of most newspapers. Thessaloniki had the highest number of published newspapers in Greece, but after the fire most did not manage to rebuild their businesses and publish again. Approximately 4,096 of the 7,695 shops within the city were destroyed and 70% of the workforce was unemployed.
However, the devastation caused by the fire gave prime-minister Eleftherios Venizelos the opportunity to redesign the city, upgrading it to a modern, European city- same as he envisioned for the whole country. Acting with quick reflexes, he commissioned the then Minister of Transport, Alexandros Papanastasiou, to set up a committee of experts for the urban planning of Thessaloniki.
As head of the committee a French architect - urban planner Ernest Hebrard was appointed. Hebrard was a member of the French mission to Thessaloniki and was commissioned with mapping the Roman monuments. Hebrard had a clear mission: give Thessaloniki a European make-over.
From a city characterized as "picturesque and enchanting… with mosque towers and domes", as Karolos Dill recounts, with winding narrow alleys and dead ends, Thessaloniki would become a modern European city, with well-planned streets and public spaces, spacious avenues and residential blocks, where light and air would penetrate.
This Exhibition narrates the story of the 1917 Thessaloniki fire through french Cartes Postales and photographs.
The exhibition contains items from the following institutions:
