At the turn of the twentieth century, the age-old Ottoman Empire was collapsing. Life was dangerous in all remote areas, on side roads and remote villages, but in Macedonia the situation was simply unbearable. Revolutionaries, bandits and feuding insurgents, members of different nations…, each of them knew only their “righteous” cause, and terror was their chosen means. Traveling to the more distant places of the province became a dangerous adventure, and a decent man could easily lose his head just 20-30 km from the center of Thessaloniki.
But in Thessaloniki itself, life was still quite normal. In a complicated religious-national mixture, in which Spanish Jews made up the majority of the population, religious tolerance was exemplary, and liberal ideas from the West were accepted by the city’s elite, so the city became a leader in progress and modernization. The railway arrived in the city, the tram was opened, and the streets got electric lighting. It gave the right to a class of people to be lulled into safety, to ignore the collapse of the empire and devote themselves to raising the quality of their lives. They were educated in the West, enjoyed the arts, built beautiful homes and decorated them in the irresistible style of the late Ottoman oriental bourgeoisie with the expert help of two of their distinguished fellow citizens, Poselli and Arrigoni, Italian architects who found their home in that city. . Some of the best-off citizens were Jews, some were Sabbateans (followers of Sabatai Zevi, the messiah from the 17th century, also known as Dönmeh), some were Westerners, and there were also Turks, Greeks, Cincars, as befits a Balkan metropolis . Together they were building a new, progressive world, without seeing that they were building it in the crater of a volcano.
By the time they realized what was happening, it was too late. The luckier ones at least saved their lives and were deported to Turkey, and for most of the rest, Auschwitz was the final destination. They left behind their family villas, the headquarters of their companies, religious and public buildings, as a rule, the work of the aforementioned Italian architects. Those buildings still stand in Thessaloniki today and their appearance attracts the longing looks of both art lovers and irredeemable nostalgics.
Poselli and Arrigoni
The decline of the Ottoman Empire was not a one-way process. Some of the last Ottoman sultans, and especially their main opponents, the Young Turks, made an exemplary effort to modernize the country in a race against time. In the wave of modernization, architects and engineers from the West were welcome and the Italians, more than others, took advantage of that chance. In Constantinople, Raimondo d’Aronzo, the sultan’s court architect, excelled both in the reinterpretation of traditional oriental motifs in modern buildings, as well as in art nouveau buildings, which became one of the hallmarks of that megalopolis. In Smyrna (Izmir), charming villas for Levantines (a local term for the descendants of Genoese and Venetian merchants), were designed by architects of Italian-Levantine origin: Storari, Rossetti, Molli, Mongeri. Vitaliano Poselli and Pierro Arrigoni were unmatched in Thessaloniki.
The Sicilian Vitaliano Poselli (1838-1918) first tried to make his way in Constantinople, but his work drew him to Thessaloniki, and since 1886 he has been creating in that city, leaving the most beautiful works in Constantinople to a greater master, the aforementioned d’Aronc. In Thessaloniki, Poselli was given all the most important jobs: leading banks, the Ottoman administration building and unusually diverse religious buildings – a synagogue, an Armenian church, a Catholic church and Yeni Djami, a Sabbatarian mosque.
Pierro Arrigoni (1856-1940), born in Turin, followed in the footsteps of his older colleague in Thessaloniki. Considering that the projects for state buildings were given to Poselli anyway, Arrigoni focused on designing villas for private investors from wealthy merchant families, in which he was particularly successful.
Thessaloniki villas
At the end of the nineteenth century, wealthy industrialists and merchants, Jews, Dönmeh (Sabbatians) and foreigners began to build their residences in the southern part of the city, leaving only the headquarters of their companies in the center, in the Francomahalla (French Quarter). The most beautiful villas of the wealthy Thessalonica are located in a several kilometer long street leading south, which today is called Vassilissis Olgas (Queen Olga) Street. In an unusual, spontaneously created urban concept, a series of modern, uniform six-story buildings is interrupted by inserts of charming, richly decorated villas built more than 100 years ago. Let this text be a kind of nostalgic walk along that street with a special reference to those villas designed by Arrigoni and Poselli.
Villa of Mehmet Kapandzi – Vassilissis Olgas Street no. 108
Villa Kapandzi, as it is still called today, is an eclectic building built around 1893, according to Arrigoni’s project, as a residence for Mehmet Kapandzi, a rich banker and textile merchant from the famous Sabatai family.
When Thessaloniki was annexed to Greece in 1912, the first Greek military commander, Prince Nicholas, was stationed there. And when, a little later, during the First World War, the pro-British Greek government broke away from the pro-German king and made its headquarters in Thessaloniki, Prime Minister Venizelos lived in Kapandzi’s villa. It is also known that the villa, until 1972, served as a male high school, and after that, the National Bank of Greece, which in the meantime bought it, finally completely renovated it and from 1989 until today, it is a place for exhibitions that organized by the cultural foundation of that bank.
Villa Ahmet Kapandzija – Vassilissis Olgas Street no. 105
Not far from Mehmet Kapandzi’s villa, there is another eclecticist pearl, the residence of his younger brother Ahmet, built around 1895, also designed by Pierro Arrigoni. The villa has been owned by the Greek state since 1923, when the Sabbatarians were exiled to Turkey, and since then it has been a favorite seat of state institutions. Thus, during the war, the villa of Ahmet Kapandzi was the headquarters of the Gestapo, and when Thessaloniki was the European Capital of Culture in 1997, the offices of the organization center were located in this villa. We can wonder as much as we want, but fifteen years later, the mansion still houses the offices of that center, someone still comes to work there and gets paid for it.
Villa Allatini – Vassilissis Olgas Street no. 198
The residence of the rich Jewish industrialist Carlo Allatini was built around 1896, according to Poselli’s design. It is the most imposing villa in Thessaloniki and as soon as it was built, it became one of the symbols of the city, but today it is difficult to see because of the treetops in the spacious park that surrounds it. The luxury that Allatini planned for himself determined the subsequent fate of the building. It is known that for some time the head of the international gendarmerie, the Italian general Robilot, was housed in it, and when, in 1908, the Young Turks took power, that villa was, quite appropriately, chosen as the dignified house arrest of the deposed Sultan Abdulhamid II. That’s how the Allatini villa got its most demanding tenant, an unsuccessful, conservative ruler, accustomed to living in luxury, both at court and in prison.
In 1912, the building was taken over by the victorious Greek army. Later, the University was located there, then the Health Center, and from 1979 until today, the Ministry of Internal Affairs is located there.
Dino Fernandez Villa – Casa Bianca – Vassilissis Olgas Street no. 180
The villa of Dino Fernandez, merchant and industrialist, was designed by Arrigoni around 1910. The villa is still known today as Villa Bianca or Casa Bianca, after the name of its owner’s wife. The villa, located in a spacious park, is a beautiful example of art nouveau. Today it houses an art gallery.
Other villas in Vassilissis Olgas Street
A visitor who wants to take a walk along Vassilissis Olgas Street will have the opportunity to see many more villas of Thessaloniki’s fin de siècle. Some of them are still in ruins, but since the land has not been sold for new construction, the intention of the city authorities to reconstruct them can be seen.
The Benny Fernandez House (Vassilissis Olgas No. 144), also known as the Hirsch House, designed by Arrigoni for another member of the Fernandez family, is today in ruins and awaiting renovation.
Villa Modiano (Vassilissis Olgas no. 68), which the elderly also remember as the Government building, was designed by Eli Modiano, a Thessaloniki architect trained in Paris, for his father, a wealthy Jewish merchant, Yakov Modiano. Today it houses the Museum of Folk Art, and before that it was also the seat of the Macedonian Provincial Government, a military school, and some religious institution.
The magnificent Turkish Baroque Villa Mordoch (Vassilissis Olgas no. 162), today is an art gallery.
The beautiful house named “Shalem Villa” has yet to be renovated.
Osman Ali Bey’s neoclassical house or villa “Melissa” (Vassilissis Olgas no. 36), today is the Byzantine Research Center.
Hafiz Bey’s villa (Vassilissis Olgas no. 32), one of the largest and most beautiful, has been restored in an exemplary manner. The exiled Kosovar-Albanian politician Hasan Priština lived in it between the two wars, as one of the few Muslims in the city from which they were officially expelled, but he too was soon killed, by order of the Albanian king Zogu or the Yugoslav secret service. In that villa today there is a school for blind and partially sighted children.
Epilogue
For centuries, Thessaloniki was a peaceful, business-oriented city of exemplary religious tolerance, the last echo of the vanished al-Andalus from which most of its population came. For almost five hundred years, the city was spared from war and natural disasters, but the first half of the twentieth century paid for it all, with ever-increasing greenback interest. During that period, Thessaloniki became the focal point of a whole series of wars, revolutions, refugee crises, assassinations, fires and genocides. When the line was finally drawn, nothing was the same. The old city burned down in a fire, the minarets were demolished, the Muslims and Sabbateans were expelled, the Jews were killed, and they were replaced by embittered Greek refugees from Asia Minor. Surnames that dominated the city for a long time, Allatini, Kapandzi, Modiano, Fernandez, no longer had anyone alive to bear them. The Italian architects, Poselli and Arrigoni, themselves shared the fate of their city, to which they remained faithful until death. Poselli died in 1918, when the city had already begun to change irreversibly, and Arrigoni was assassinated in Thessaloniki in 1940, not waiting to see just one more, final blow to the city as he knew it.
The world that the ill-fated Thessaloniki bourgeoisie tried to create no longer exists and will never return, but the buildings they built are still there. The fundamental transformation of the city has affected its buildings, so that they no longer have the purpose for which they were designed, but often a completely unpredictable one. Intended as wealthy residences or as business buildings, these buildings often changed their function several times, most often to become museums, schools or government institutions.
It seems that only two buildings, both of Posseli’s, have passed through the entire horror untouched and preserved their original purpose: a small Armenian church near the White Tower and a Catholic church in Francomahala.
