A fire that broke out in the Chamber of Handicrafts building in Thessaloniki on Friday afternoon has left eleven people hospitalized.
The building, located in the center of the city at Aristotelous Square, burst into flames on Friday. Firefighters and first responders rushed to the scene, where they freed 44 people who were trapped in the burning building, as well as children trapped in the tutoring business next door.
“We received information that there were likely trapped people and we immediately alerted a large force of 12 trucks with 40 firefighters so that we could free people from the balconies, if necessary,” local official Marios Apostolidis stated.
A total of nine people were taken to two hospitals in the city—Papanikolaou Hospital and the St. Demetrius Hospital—seven of whom have mild respiratory symptoms, and two of whom are intubated. Many of the injured are children who were in classes next door when the fire broke out.
Aristotelous Square, Thessaloniki
Aristotelous Square is the main city square of Thessaloniki, Greece’s second largest city and the capital of Macedonia.
Located along Nikis Avenue, near the city’s waterfront, or the paralia, Aristotelous is right in the center of it all in Thessaloniki.
The famous square was designed by the French architect Ernest Hébrard in 1918, but most of it was built decades later in the 1950s following debates and arguments between the local authorities, the residents of the city, and the government.
Questions were continually raised about the funding and size of the project.
Many of the buildings surrounding Aristotelous Square today have been renovated, and its northern areas were largely restored in the 2000s.
The history of Aristotelous Square began just after the immense destruction of the great fire of 1917, which ruined a great deal of the city.
Prior to the fire, Thessaloniki lacked much of what was considered to be essential and characteristic in European architecture, namely large squares and monumental buildings.
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