The impetus for the preparation of this study was my engagement with the monumental topography of Christian Thessaloniki, specifically with the churches, within the framework of my academic teaching obligations.

In searching for and recording the relevant literature, I quickly realized the volume and difficulty of locating the mostly older related studies. Various approaches, multi-layered readings by expert researchers, sometimes strictly scientific and other times not, address almost every aspect of the identity of the monuments.

However, this pluralism and diversity act in a divisive manner and do not contribute to anyone gaining a holistic picture of the character of each monument. For this reason, when I felt that I had reached a satisfactory point, I wanted to utilize the material I had painstakingly gathered to compose an extensive study that would provide a comprehensive and sometimes critical examination of all those elements that make up the history of each monument, accompanied by the necessary bibliographic documentation.

(…) [Excerpt from the text of the preface]