Thessaloniki, Greece - Agios Dimitrios(Saint Demetrius) Church - Travel Video PostCard

Thessaloniki is Greece's second major economic, industrial, commercial and political centre, and a major transportation hub for the rest of southeastern Europe;

With the Fall of Rome in 476, Thessaloniki became the second-largest city of the Eastern Roman Empire.[18]

Thessaloniki has a lot of Byzantine and paleo-Christian churches that have been declared by UNESCO as World Heritage Monuments in 1988.

The church of Agios Dimitrios(Saint Demetrius) is the most famous church in Thessaloniki. Agios Dimitrios became the patron saint of the city in 1912

(324 A.D.) and made Christianity the official religion of the Byzantine Empire, people built a small church on the place of the martyrdom of Agios Dimitrios, close to the Roman baths.

In 413 AD, a bigger three-aisled basilica was founded

in 634 A.D. Shortly afterwards, an even bigger five-isled basilica was built, which remains till today and constitutes the largest church of Greece.

The crypt of the saint, accessed by a staircase behind the sanctuary, is said to be the site where the saint was killed by the Roman soldiers and buried. His crypt was converted into an exhibition area in 1988,

Today, his memory is celebrated every year, along with the deliberation of the city, with a big parade and a glorious Mass.

Underneath the Church of St Demetrios is the place where St Demetrios, Thessaloniki's patron saint, was martyred.

As the level of the ground gradually rose over the centuries, this area acquired the form of a crypt. According both to tradition and to archaeological findings, it was an old bathhouse, in which Demetrios was imprisoned and eventually martyred in ad 303. In the 5th century, when the first Church of St Demetrios was built, the site of his martyrdom was incorporated into the church and the fountain was converted into a source of holy water. In the years that followed, the fountain acquired basins, from which the faithful could collect myron, the sweet-smelling oil produced by the saint's relics. The crypt filled up with earth during the period of Ottoman rule and was not rediscovered until after the fire of 1917. It has been restored by the Archaeological Service and was converted into an exhibition space in 1988.

The first church on the spot was constructed in the early 4th century AD, replacing a Roman bath. . Repeatedly gutted by fires, the church eventually was reconstructed as a five-aisled basilica in 629--634. This was the surviving form of the church much as it is today. The most important shrine in the city, it was probably larger than the local cathedral. The historic location of the latter is now unknown.