White Tower of Thessaloniki

The White Tower is a heavy, six-story stone cylinder standing right at the edge of the Thermaic Gulf. It anchors the city waterfront with its thick walls and broad crenellations. When the Ottomans finished it in the late fifteenth century, they built it to defend the harbor, but the structure soon gained a grimmer reputation. Prisoners once languished in its dark, crowded chambers, and the sultan’s executioners performed their tasks here so frequently that locals long knew it as the Tower of Blood.