The Largest Mill in the Orient (Postcard)

When the Allatini Mills building was built in 1898, it was considered the largest industrial building in the “Orient” (then the catch-all term for the non-European world east of Europe). The first modern flour mill in Salonika, it was owned by the Allatinis, one of the city’s wealthiest Jewish families. The building stood as a visual testament to the prominence of Jewish Salonika, a majority-Jewish city that was home to more Sephardic Jews than any other single community in the world. The Allatini Mills building was considered a landmark, and the Christian Italian architect who designed it, Vitaliano Poselli, also designed many other public and private buildings in the city.