SALONICHI, SALONIKI, anciently Thessalonica, is a large and handsome seaport town of European Turkey in Macedon, situated at the north end of a gulf of the same name. The town is built on the de clivity of a steep hill, and is encompassed with a lofty stone wall, which ascends the hill with a triangular outline, seven miles round, and terminates in a seven towered fortress. When approached from the sea, the domes and minarets of the mosques have a fine ap pearance, embosomed among cypress trees. In the interior the town is irregular, but more clean and comfortable than other Turkish towns.
The principal public building is the church of St. Sophia, which has a mosque that resembles, though on a diminished scale, that of St. Demetrius, consist ing.of one church erected over another, containing 1000 pillars of jasper, Sze.
The trade of the place, which is second only to that of Constantinople, consists in cotton, tobacco, corn, and wool, and is in the hands of Greeks, Jews, Eng lish, French, Italians, and Dutch merchants.
One of the most interesting objects of antiquity here arc the remains of the ancient Hippodrome, which consist of a fine Corinthian colonnade of five pillars sustaining an entablature. The marble alto-relievos, in which the figures are as large as life, are reckoned among the finest specimens of sculpture, and are ac curately represented in Stewart's atlas. The other objects of antiquity arc the rotunda, on the model of the Pantheon at Rome, and two triumphal arches of Augustus and Constantius, one of which (called by some the arch of Antoninus) is almost entire. There are various blocks of marble in different parts of the town, which arc used as cisterns. Several ancient fragments with inscriptions have been found without the city. Population 70,000. East long. 22° 56'. north lat. 40'.