5 Days in Thessaloniki

Thessaloniki has an opinion on breakfast, and the opinion is bougatsa: thin sheets of filo baked around a filling of semolina custard, cheese, spinach or minced meat, then chopped into squares with a big knife. The sweet one gets a snowfall of sugar and cinnamon. Locals will tell you the recipe came with refugees from Asia Minor after 1922, which is a good story and at least partly true.

Bantis, on Panagias Faneromenis street, has been making it since 1969 and is the name you'll hear most. Order one me krema (with custard) and one me tyri (with cheese) to share, and a coffee. Go early: it's a morning place and closes in the afternoon. If you're up late instead, Giannis on Mitropoleos street opens at 8pm and bakes through the night.

Walk down to Aristotelous Square, the grand open space that runs straight up from the sea. It exists because of a disaster. On 18 August 1917, a spark from a kitchen started a fire that burned for 32 hours, destroyed most of the old center and left more than 70,000 people homeless, about 50,000 of them Jewish. The French architect Ernest Hébrard drew up a new plan with wide avenues and this monumental axis, and the arcaded buildings around the square went up mostly in the 1950s.

It's the city's living room: rallies, concerts, Christmas and every celebration happen here. The Olympion cinema on the square is the home of the Thessaloniki film festival every November. A big redesign has been tendered, so don't be surprised to find parts of it fenced off in the next few years.

A block inland, the lanes of Kapani, also called Vlali, are the oldest market in the city, recorded as the flour market back in 1569. Today it's fish on ice, barrels of olives, spices, cheese and loud stallholders, and it's the best place to see how the city actually shops. Be warned that long-running renovation works have left a lot of shops closed, so parts of it feel half empty until the work is finished.

Across Ermou street is the Modiano market, a covered hall built in 1922-25 by the Jewish architect Eli Modiano on the site of a synagogue that burned in 1917. Restored in 2022, it closed again in 2025 and reopened under new management in September 2026, with about thirty businesses: a butcher, a fishmonger and a bakery next to a taverna, an ouzeri, a wine bar, a microbrewery and a loukoumades counter, open roughly from 7am to midnight. For an early lunch, Vomvidia, on the street side of the building since 1982, grills some of the best soutzoukakia (spiced meat patties) in town.

Walk east along the old waterfront, past the cafés on Nikis Avenue, to the White Tower, the symbol of the city. The Ottomans built it in the 15th or 16th century, after they took the city in 1430, as part of the sea walls. It served as a garrison, then as a prison and a place of execution, and people remembered it as the Tower of Blood. In 1883 it was whitewashed, and the name White Tower stuck, long after the whitewash wore off. You'll hear that a prisoner painted it in exchange for his freedom. It's a nice story, and that's all it is.

Inside, six floors tell the story of the city, well enough to be worth the ticket before you see the rest of it. The real reward is the roof, with the whole bay, the port and, on a clear day, Mount Olympus far across the water.

From the tower, join the evening volta, the stroll that half the city takes along the new waterfront. The promenade was redesigned in 2006-14 by Prodromos Nikiforidis and Bernard Cuomo as a string of themed gardens by the sea, and it runs for about 3.5 km to the Concert Hall. First you pass the big bronze Alexander the Great on his horse, put up in 1973-74.

Keep going to the Umbrellas, George Zongolopoulos's forest of metal umbrellas on tall poles, installed in 1997 when Thessaloniki was European Capital of Culture. Get there for sunset, when the sky goes orange behind them and the whole promenade stops to take the same photo. Then turn around and enjoy the walk back.

For dinner, take a taxi or a 25-minute walk back west to Ladadika, the old port quarter where oil (ladi) was stored in warehouses. It survived the 1917 fire, fell apart, was listed in 1985 and has been the city's restaurant and bar district since the 1990s. The lanes are full of tables on the cobbles.

Do what Thessaloniki does: order meze, lots of small plates for the table, and a small bottle of tsipouro, the local grape spirit, with or without anise, which you drink with ice and water. Zythos, a beer hall and restaurant on Katouni street since 1990, is a reliable classic, with live rebetiko on some nights. Ladadika is lively and a little touristy; the food is honest, but check the prices on the menu before you order the fish. For a more local night, head to the tables around Athonos Square or the Bit Bazaar instead. Before dinner, walk three minutes to the old port, where converted warehouses hold the Cinema Museum and the MOMus photography museum.

Around 300 AD, the Roman emperor Galerius made Thessaloniki one of his capitals and built himself a whole quarter of palaces and monuments. The Rotunda is the most complete piece: a massive round brick building that may have been meant as his mausoleum or a temple. Nobody knows for sure, and Galerius ended up buried in what is now Serbia anyway.

It has been everything since. It became a church at the end of the 4th or in the 5th century, when its dome was covered in gold mosaics of saints in front of fantasy architecture, which you can still see from the floor, about 30 m below. Binoculars help. The Ottomans turned it into a mosque in 1590, and the minaret outside is the only one left standing in the city. Its long restoration is now finished.

Walk down the old processional way to the Arch of Galerius, which locals just call Kamara, "the arch". It was built around 298-303 to celebrate Galerius's victory over the Persians. Only part of it survives, but the marble panels on the pillars are covered in battle scenes, elephants, prisoners and the emperor himself, and they're worth a slow look. Today it's the city's favorite meeting point, with students on the steps and buses roaring past, which is exactly how it should be.

A few minutes south, in Navarinou Square, walkways take you over the excavated remains of Galerius's palace: mosaic floors, corridors and the foundations of the great octagon, a throne room or palace church. Most of the city walks straight past it on the way to the café tables in the square, but it's the best place to picture the imperial capital that stood here, with the Rotunda at one end of the complex and the sea at the other.

Thessaloniki's Byzantine churches are a UNESCO World Heritage Site, fifteen monuments in all, and two of the finest are close together here. Hagia Sophia, a smaller cousin of the one in Istanbul, dates from around the 8th century. Look up into the dome: the 9th-century mosaic of the Ascension shows Christ rising, surrounded by the apostles and angels among trees.

A short walk north, just off Egnatia, the Panagia Acheiropoietos is older still, a long basilica from the 5th century with marble columns and mosaics of birds and vines under its arches. When the Ottomans took the city in 1430, it was the first church they turned into a mosque, and the sultan's inscription recording it is still carved on one of the columns.

Lunch is gyros, meat cooked on a vertical spit, sliced and wrapped in a thick pita with tomato, onion, tzatziki and a few fries. In Thessaloniki the default is pork. Diavasi, on Pavlou Mela street since 1977, is one of the city's institutions, known just as much for its grilled soutzoukakia, and it now also has a branch in the Red House, a landmark 1920s building opposite Hagia Sophia. If you'd rather eat on skewers, ask for souvlaki.

Walk west along Egnatia and the layers of the city pile up. Panagia Chalkeon, the small brick church of the coppersmiths' quarter, was built in 1028, as its founder's inscription says. Across the road, the Bey Hamam, built in 1444 and known locally as the Paradise Baths, the biggest Ottoman bath in the Balkans, reopened in June 2026 after restoration as a cultural venue. It has been opening only in the late morning, so you may have to see it from outside or come back another day. A few blocks on, the old Hamza Bey Mosque of 1467-68, long hidden under scaffolding and known as the Alcazar after the cinema it once housed, is due to open with an exhibition on the city in October 2026.

At the far western end of Egnatia, if you have energy left, the 14th-century Church of the Holy Apostles has some of the last great Byzantine mosaics. Then go down into Venizelou metro station, which opened in 2024. When the builders dug it out, they found the main street of Byzantine Thessaloniki, paving, shops and crossroads, and it was kept in place inside the station. You can see it for free, before the ticket gates. It took the city about eighteen years and a lot of arguments to get its metro, and this is the good part of the story.

At night, walk a few blocks south to Valaoritou and Syngrou streets, a grid of old workshops and warehouses that turned into the city's densest bar district. It's where Thessaloniki goes out, and it goes out late: nothing much happens before 11pm, and on Thursday to Saturday it's busy until well after 2am. Wander, pick the bar with the music you like and don't plan too hard.

Thessaloniki also has a long bond with rebetiko, the Greek blues. Vassilis Tsitsanis wrote some of its best songs here in the 1930s and 40s. For live music in a more traditional setting, look out for rebetiko nights at the bars and tavernas of Ano Poli and Ladadika.

Start just below Hagios Demetrios at the Roman Forum, the civic heart of the Roman city, found by accident in the 1960s when the ground was cleared for a courthouse. You walk around a big paved square with the remains of porticoes, a small odeon where the city council and audiences met, and the cryptoporticus, a long vaulted underground gallery that held up one side of the square. A small museum explains how it all fitted together.

A few minutes uphill, Hagios Demetrios is the church of the city's patron saint, a Roman officer who, according to tradition, was martyred in the baths that stood here, around 303. A basilica went up over the spot in the 5th century, was rebuilt after a fire in the 7th, and burned again in 1917. What you see today was rebuilt around the old walls and reconsecrated in 1948. Inside, the surviving 7th-century mosaics on the pillars show Demetrios with the church's founders, among the oldest images of the saint anywhere.

Go down into the crypt, the remains of the Roman bath, where people believe Demetrios was killed and where pilgrims once collected holy oil. The church is at its most intense on 26 October, the saint's feast day and also the anniversary of the day Greek troops took the city in 1912.

Ten minutes' walk east, next to the Turkish consulate, is the pink Ottoman house where Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey, was born in 1881. It's a small house museum with his family's rooms and photographs, reopened in November 2025 after restoration. Turkish visitors come by the busload, and it's a reminder that for most of its history this was an Ottoman city, and a very mixed one, including the Dönme, descendants of Jews who had converted to Islam, whose grand villas still line Vasilissis Olgas avenue. On the way up the hill, look into the small church of Agios Nikolaos Orfanos, a UNESCO monument with the finest 14th-century frescoes in the city.

Now climb into Ano Poli, a maze of steep lanes, wooden-framed houses, cats and bougainvillea. Hidden in the middle is Hosios David, a tiny church with one of the most beautiful early Christian mosaics anywhere: a young, beardless Christ in a halo of light, from the late 5th century. Its opening hours are irregular, so count yourself lucky if the door is open.

A little higher is the Vlatadon Monastery, founded in the 14th century and still a working monastery, with a small church, a quiet courtyard under the trees and a terrace with a view over the whole city down to the sea. Have lunch in one of the tavernas of Kastra, near the walls, before you climb on to the Heptapyrgion, and save the Tsinari fountain, the heart of the old upper town, for the walk down tonight.

At the top of the city is the Heptapyrgion, "seven towers", or Yedi Kule in Turkish: the Byzantine citadel, rebuilt by the Ottomans in 1431, the year after they took the city. From 1890 to 1989 it was a notorious prison, and Greek songs still mention it. Today you walk through the old cells and yards, and along the battlements for a view of the city from above. It's a strange, slightly haunting place, and much more interesting than it looks from outside.

Walk down along the old walls, some of the best-preserved Byzantine walls in the world, to the Trigonion Tower, a huge round tower at the corner of the upper town. The square in front of it is where Thessaloniki watches the sunset: the whole city below you, the port, the bay and, if the air is clear, the outline of Mount Olympus. Bring a drink, sit on the wall with everyone else and stay until the lights come on. The square is free; the tower itself opens only rarely, by appointment and with a ticket.

Afterwards, walk down through the lanes past the Tsinari fountain and eat in one of the upper town's relaxed tavernas. Near the bottom, I Prigkipos, a café on Apostolou Pavlou street by the Atatürk house, has live rebetiko on Thursday to Saturday nights.

Veria is a pleasant hill town that most visitors skip on their way to Vergina, and it deserves a couple of hours. The Barbouta, its old Jewish quarter, is a cluster of restored houses in bright colors by the Tripotamos river, with a synagogue whose present building dates from 1850, the oldest in northern Greece. It usually opens only by appointment, so you may have to admire it from outside.

Nearby, the small Church of Christ (also called Anastasis) was painted in 1315 by Georgios Kalliergis, who signed himself "the best painter in all Thessaly", and the frescoes are among the finest of their age. On the way down, stop at the Bema of the Apostle Paul, the spot where tradition says Paul preached to the people of Veria.

On 8 November 1977, the archaeologist Manolis Andronikos dug into a great mound at Vergina and found a royal tomb that robbers had never touched. Inside was a solid gold chest, stamped with the sixteen-pointed Vergina Sun, containing the burned bones of a man wrapped in purple cloth, along with a gold wreath, armor and ivory. Andronikos identified him as Philip II of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great, murdered at Aigai in 336 BC. Scholars still argue about whether it's Philip II or Alexander's half-brother Philip III, and you'll hear both.

What makes the visit so powerful is that the museum is built inside the mound itself. You walk in the dark between the tomb facades, with their painted hunting scene, and then past the gold, which is displayed a few meters from where it was found.

The same ticket covers the new main museum building, opened in 2022 with galleries on the gods and the queens of Macedon, and the Palace of Aigai, about 1 km away on a hillside above the village. Built for Philip II, it was probably the largest building in classical Greece, and it reopened in January 2024 after a 16-year restoration. Its mosaic floors and rebuilt columns look out over the plain of Macedonia, and just below it is the theatre where Philip was assassinated at his daughter's wedding. It's quieter than the tombs and gives you the scale of the kingdom that Alexander set out from.

Back in Veria, eat before the bus home. Vergiotiko, a grill restaurant inside the old walls, has a reputation as one of the best meat restaurants in Greece. Then find revani, the town's semolina cake soaked in syrup, which dozens of Veria pastry shops make. Chochliouros on Agios Antonios square claims to have been baking it since 1886 and has made nothing else since the 1950s. Buy a tray for the hotel, since it keeps well and nobody in Thessaloniki will turn it down.

In 1492, Spain expelled its Jews, and tens of thousands found a new home in the Ottoman Empire. So many settled in Thessaloniki that for four centuries they were its largest community and Ladino, their Judeo-Spanish, was the language of the port, which closed on Saturdays. They called the city Madre de Israel, the mother of Israel. The small Jewish Museum, in one of the few Jewish buildings to survive the 1917 fire, tells that story, with gravestones rescued from the old Jewish cemetery.

It also tells how it ended. On 11 July 1942, the German occupiers made about 9,000 Jewish men stand for hours in the summer sun in Eleftherias Square, a few minutes' walk away, and humiliated them. That December the city dug up the vast Jewish cemetery, with the Germans' consent, and Aristotle University now stands partly on its site. From 15 March 1943, more than 45,000 Jews were deported to Auschwitz in a few months, and about 96% of them were murdered. Eleftherias Square itself is a building site until around spring 2027, as its car park is turned into a Park of Remembrance. Instead, see the Monastirioton synagogue on Syngrou street, the only synagogue in the city to survive the war, or the memorial to the old cemetery on the university campus. A national Holocaust Museum is being built by the old railway station, but it won't open before 2028.

Walk or take a bus east along the sea to the Museum of Byzantine Culture, one of the best museums in Greece and the winner of the Council of Europe's museum prize in 2005. After two days of Byzantine churches, this is where it all comes together: early Christian tombs painted with gardens and birds, mosaics, icons, silver and everyday life in the empire that lasted a thousand years, all laid out with a lot of light and space.

After lunch, walk next door to the Archaeological Museum, where the gold of ancient Macedonia is kept: wreaths of gold oak leaves, jewelry from graves around the city, and the Derveni krater, a huge bronze wine vessel from the 4th century BC, covered in dancing followers of Dionysus. It's the perfect sequel to yesterday at Vergina, and it explains the Macedonian kings better than any book.

In late afternoon, take the metro's new Kalamaria branch, open since August 2026, south to Nea Krini. It's a quick ride, and it takes you through Kalamaria, the part of the city built for refugees. After the Greco-Turkish war and the population exchange of 1923, around 100,000 Greek refugees from Asia Minor settled in Thessaloniki, while the city's Muslims left for Turkey. They named their new neighborhoods after the towns they had lost: Nea Krini is "New Krini", after a town near Smyrna, now Çeşme in Turkey, and Aretsou, next door, after a village near İzmit.

End the trip at a fish taverna by the water in Nea Krini, where the refugees' descendants have been feeding the city for generations. Hamodrakas, in a listed building since 1926, and Maiami, opened in 1945 by refugees from Smyrna, are two of the oldest. Order grilled fish, mussels, kalamarakia (fried squid) and a Greek salad, with ouzo or a bottle of Macedonian white wine, and watch the lights of the city come on across the bay. It's the view of Thessaloniki you've spent five days walking around in.