The Archivist of Thessaloniki: A Collector’s Passion for Preserving a City’s History

“Until that moment, I hadn’t realized the extent of the destruction – almost the entire city center had been leveled. That sparked my interest, and I bought three postcards depicting the aftermath of this catastrophe,” he tells me one October morning when we meet at his favorite café near the White Tower. Three cards from Thessaloniki quickly became ten, then twenty, and eventually an astounding 15,000. Many of these dated from WWI, when thousands of soldiers – British and French among them – passed through Thessaloniki. “Postcards were their only means of communication,” the collector explains.“I remember finding a French soldier’s entire correspondence, with postcards sent to his wife every day for 32 days. The postcards were numbered, each one describing his daily activities – never a word about the war itself. Through these cards, I was able to glimpse at the lives of so many people.” Wherever he traveled, Megas always searched for things connected to Thessaloniki. What began with postcards soon led to photographs, then to engravings – some dating back to the mid 1800s. Soon, he was scouring magazines from England, France, Germany and Russia, and eventually rare books, too. His remarkable collection spans a century, from 1850 to 1950, with a particular emphasis on the Ottoman era and the city’s history up to 1912, although it also includes items from as late as the 1980s.

“I was only interested in Thessaloniki – nothing beyond it. Not even its surrounding areas,” he says. Collecting thousands of artifacts tied to the city’s history – from every corner of the globe, including Europe, New Zealand and Africa – became, in a way, his way of reconnecting with the city where he was born. Through his collection, he rediscovered his hometown, even while far away from it. What began as nostalgia soon turned into intellectual curiosity. The more he learned, the more he felt compelled to delve deeper into Thessaloniki’s identity. He meticulously cataloged each item in his collection, creating a digital archive that documented the type, date and theme of every artifact. For Megas, the process of collecting became a form of exploration, a way to piece together the fragmented history of his city; a passion that he pursues to this day.

“As an engineer, I had little connection to the literary world. There were so many things I didn’t know about Thessaloniki’s history. Collecting taught me so much – so much, in fact, that it eventually led me to writing. These postcards weren’t just pictures of the White Tower or the seafront. They were historical snapshots, capturing real events. They told stories,” he explains.