Saint Panteleimon was a physician and martyr, a healer who treated the poor without charge, and churches in his name were built across the Greek world to ask for his protection from illness. The one in Thessaloniki is a small fourteenth-century church in the old quarter, with a single dome and the careful brickwork of the Palaiologan builders. It is easy to miss, because it sits in a street of ordinary houses, and has none of the grandeur of the great basilicas. That, though, is the reason to look for it. A building like this shows you what a neighbourhood church was like when the city was crowded with them, and each guild or quarter had its own.
The church has a long and rather typical history. It was built, rebuilt after fire, converted into a mosque in the Ottoman period and returned to Christian use after 1912. Within, a few traces of old paint remain on the walls, and the modest interior has the feel of a place where people have been praying for six hundred years. A caretaker keeps the key, and a note on the door may tell you the opening times. Do not be surprised if it is closed when you come, which happens often with the smaller monuments.
The riding in this area is a matter of patience. The lanes are narrow, with parked cars on both sides and unexpected one-way turns, and a motorbike is the only vehicle that really fits. Keep the speed low, because children play in the streets and dogs doze in the road. The surface is patched and can be greasy with oil or leaves, and the slopes make starting from a stop tricky when the road is wet. Evening is the best time, when the heat has gone and the lanes are full of people sitting on their doorsteps.
Fuel is within a kilometre or two on the larger roads of Ágios Pávlos and Sykiés, and you can get all you need in the little shops. Try a coffee in a cafe where the old men sit and argue about football, or buy a bag of pistachios from a street seller. A few steps uphill the walls begin, and from them you can look down over the whole sprawling city, with the cranes of the port and the glitter of the gulf.