The Church of St. Sophia was built in the mid-seventh century on the ruins three times greater along the length of the early Christian Basilica, and in the Byzantine period it was surrounded by numerous buildings as a religious and administrative purposes. Since 1585, the Church became a mosque, but was re-consecrated as a Church in 1912.

Historical and archaeological evidence suggests that in the nave and in the southern part of the colonnade of the temple of St. Sophia were buried metropolitans of Thessalonica, for example, Grigorios Catalis and Konstantin Mesopotamicus.

The Church interior is decorated with numerous mosaics and frescoes of the IX-X centuries. The fresco of the "Ascension" adorns the dome of the Church.