Thessaloniki in 2 days, on foot

This 2-day self-guided walking plan for Thessaloniki covers 13 narrated sights in an easy day-by-day order. Each day is split into a morning and an afternoon loop, and every stop has a two to three minute audio story in the Gingerguide app.

You set the pace: this is a suggested order, not a schedule. Walk it in 2 days, or stretch it out. Reorder freely; Thessaloniki rewards a detour.

The Thessaloniki route at a glance

Day 1

Day 1 covers 7 stops over about 3.6 km as the crow flies, from Church of Hagia Sophia to Heptapyrgion (Yedi Kule). ≈ 3.6 km between stops, straight line

Morning

1. Church of Hagia Sophia: A domed Byzantine church of about the eighth century, modelled on its namesake in Constantinople, with a golden mosaic of the Ascension in its dome and an enthroned Virgin in the apse; a UNESCO monument. 0.5 km to the next stop
2. Aristotelous Square: The grand seafront square at the heart of the city, a sweep of arcaded buildings opening to the sea, designed after the 1917 fire by the French architect Ernest Hébrard and built mostly in the 1950s. 0.3 km to the next stop
3. Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki: A museum in a rare survivor of the 1917 fire that tells the story of the Sephardic Jews of Thessaloniki, who made it a great Jewish city, and of its destruction in the Holocaust. 0.5 km to the next stop
4. Ladadika: The old market and warehouse quarter by the port, named for its oil merchants, its low 19th-century buildings saved from demolition and revived into a lively maze of tavernas, bars and cobbled lanes. 0.8 km to the next stop

Afternoon

1. Roman Forum (Ancient Agora): The excavated Roman forum of Thessaloniki, with its restored stone odeon, two-storey colonnades and a vaulted cryptoporticus, hidden for centuries and found by chance in the 1960s beneath the modern city. 0.2 km to the next stop
2. Church of Hagios Demetrios: The great basilica of Saint Demetrius, patron of Thessaloniki, built over the Roman bath where he was martyred; famous for early Byzantine mosaics and a crypt, rebuilt after the 1917 fire; a UNESCO monument. 1.3 km to the next stop
3. Heptapyrgion (Yedi Kule): The hilltop fortress crowning the upper town, a Byzantine and Ottoman citadel of ten towers that spent a century as the city's grim prison, sung in Greek rebetika songs and now a monument with wide views.

Day 2

Day 2 covers 6 stops over about 3 km as the crow flies, from Ano Poli and the Byzantine Walls to Nea Paralia (New Waterfront). ≈ 3 km between stops, straight line

Morning

1. Ano Poli and the Byzantine Walls: The old upper town that escaped the 1917 fire, a maze of timber Ottoman houses and cobbled lanes wrapped in the Byzantine walls, with the Trigonion Tower and sweeping views over the city and the gulf. 0.8 km to the next stop
2. Rotunda of Galerius: A colossal Roman round building of about 306 AD, raised for the emperor Galerius, then a church with golden early-Christian mosaics and later an Ottoman mosque whose minaret still stands; a UNESCO monument. 0.2 km to the next stop
3. Arch of Galerius (Kamara): A Roman triumphal arch of about 300 AD, the city's 'Kamara', carved with reliefs of the emperor Galerius's victory over the Persians and straddling the ancient Via Egnatia; a UNESCO monument. 0.7 km to the next stop

Afternoon

1. White Tower: The round stone tower on the seafront that is the symbol of Thessaloniki: an Ottoman fort and notorious prison, once called the Tower of Blood, now whitewashed and home to a museum of the city. 0.5 km to the next stop
2. Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki: The great museum of ancient Macedonia, home to the dazzling bronze Derveni Krater, the carbonised Derveni Papyrus (Europe's oldest surviving manuscript) and the gold of the Macedonian tombs. 0.8 km to the next stop
3. Nea Paralia (New Waterfront): The reimagined seafront promenade running south from the White Tower, a long landscaped walk of themed gardens, cycle paths and sculpture, crowned by Zongolopoulos's steel Umbrellas and famous for its sunsets.

Distances are straight-line between stops; streets add a little.

Updated: October 10, 2026

Full Thessaloniki guide and all stops →