Cry of agony "emitting" the people of Bit Pazar in Thessaloniki.

The old market that in two years will close a century of life remains standing with great difficulty declare to Orange Press Agency the shopkeepers, who are concerned about its continuity, as due to the accuracy and reduced incomes, much of their old clients have been lost since the pandemic.

The Bit Pazar has its own closed square And it spreads on the surrounding streets and pedestrian streets, counting time by year more and more shops with down rolls. An image, which is not worthy of its long history as it is reflected by the people working there.

"This shop is an old store, it has been opened by my late father since the 60s. He was a carpenter. He worked in 1952 as a minion, a child, and then opened this shop and worked with his brother." says John. Every morning at 9:00, he starts taking his stuff out. Objects, which were built earlier even by the market itself, which was inaugurated in 1928 by Eleftherios Venizelos in a move to support the Minor Refugees.

John's old store
The old shop of Giannis reminds you of a small bottle where a perfume is stored in order to stay intact. There, all the decades passed are closed. We meet the furniture and paintings people had in the living rooms in 1950. A jukebox from the '60s. A refrigerator from a Greek company that has long ceased to exist and suggests another era, a more productive Greece.

And of course a story alone is the very place that hosts the shops. Showing inwards, Giannis makes known that the tiles on the floor date from 1920, as well as the wooden ceiling. The way the buildings were formed covered a double need for the refugees to whom they had been granted. On the one hand, to make a living with the store they would keep on the ground floor, on the other hand to have a home to stay above.

"The other will not take an antique, he will look to pay for its current"
There are days when he won't be able to make a single collection, he says all disappointment, Georgia at Orange Press Agency.

"I am very sorry as things have happened at the Bit Pazar. We're at zero, I want to tell you. It operates a shop with handmade embroidery. She does not think that the problem starts with the different preferences young people have.

"Looking online you see that the same products sell a lot". For Giannis, the explanation is obvious and has to do with the different priorities that people are obliged to put into economic suffocation. "So it's very sophisticated our kind now. Take an antique, one this. When the rent comes, how much it is, the current how much it is, the supermarket how much it is, the other one does it holds. Looks pretty clear. This started especially after the covid". The business has long ceased to be profitable. "I'm actually keeping the store for sentimental reasons".

A man who knows stories about each of the 81 stores that make up the Bit Pazar is Manolis, a coffee maker in the square since 1992. "It's like we're a hamlet, a town in here and out we don't know what's going on. So you walk out of Venizelos' side, you walk out of Tositsa's side and you don't know what's going on outside. You've been in here all day." On the other hand, this allows Manolis to fully perceive the difference over previous years. "You go out and see 20 shops open".

Although the bazaar has been his whole world for decades, he states that he wants to retire at some point. "I'm going to 35 years now. To tell you the truth, I want three more brothers to run away, my legs are tired. I start in the morning at 5.30 hours and stay until afternoon 6-7 every day.".

All of this suggests that just before he could extinguish his largest candle, Bit Pazar seems to be simmering the same, losing more and more to the everyday life that makes it special. Daily olive oil with shopkeepers and the ability to find any kind of object from every possible time is now done with a background of empty windows and inscriptions "Selled".

"This is my last word: we lose everything".
According to accounts rescued from mouth to mouth, the market was named after the Turkish word bit meaning lice. However, what they attributed to the bazaar, that his clothes were full of lice, did not stop his later emergence into an important placemark of Thessaloniki and an integral element of her identity.

How important it was and remains the Bit Pazar, it is seen by its steady selection of travel guides and places one should go when visiting the city. In addition to tourism, however, the importance of the market is reflected both in the level of everyday life and in the last word of those who insist not to abandon it. For people like Georgia, the stake is clear: "Losing the Bit Pazar, we lose everything. This is my last word, that we lose everything.".