Roots EarthAll cities

Greece · Europe

Roots Earth in Thessaloniki: audio stories about 44 places

Roots Earth has audio stories about 44 places in Thessaloniki, Greece, in Europe. The Thessaloniki stories are in all seven Roots Earth languages: English, German, Spanish, Italian, French, Dutch and Albanian. The app needs no account: open Thessaloniki, pick a place on the city's map of places and play. Download a city's audio, then it plays without a connection. The stories are written by local people.

The 44 places are listed below in the order the app shows them, and again further down with their coordinates. The lists were taken from the Roots Earth catalogue on 15 September 2026.

Published 16 September 2026. Markdown: thessaloniki.md

The 44 places in Thessaloniki with audio stories

In the order the app shows them.

  1. White Tower of Thessaloniki
  2. Arch of Galerius (Kamara)
  3. Rotunda of Galerius
  4. Church of Saint Demetrios (Hagios Demetrios)
  5. Aristotelous Square
  6. Hagia Sophia of Thessaloniki
  7. Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki
  8. Museum of Byzantine Culture
  9. Heptapyrgion Fortress (Yedi Kule)
  10. Walls of Thessaloniki
  11. Church of the Acheiropoietos
  12. Roman Forum (Ancient Agora)
  13. Church of Hosios David (Latomou Monastery)
  14. Church of Panagia Chalkeon
  15. Church of the Holy Apostles
  16. Church of Saint Panteleimon
  17. Vlatades Monastery
  18. Bey Hamam (Baths of Paradise)
  19. Hamza Bey Mosque (Alcazar)
  20. Yeni Mosque
  21. Atatürk Museum
  22. Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki
  23. Eleftherias Square
  24. Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
  25. Thessaloniki International Fair
  26. OTE Tower
  27. Thessaloniki Concert Hall
  28. War Museum of Thessaloniki
  29. MOMus Museum of Contemporary Art
  30. NOESIS Science Center and Technology Museum
  31. Modiano Market
  32. Kapani Market (Vlali)
  33. Ladadika District
  34. Ano Poli (Upper Town)
  35. Seih Sou Forest (Kedrinos Lofos)
  36. Kalamaria
  37. Panorama
  38. Toumba Neighbourhood
  39. Toumba Stadium
  40. Kaftanzoglio National Stadium
  41. Alexandreio Melathron (Nick Galis Hall)
  42. Zeitenlik Allied Military Cemetery
  43. Thessaloniki Railway Station
  44. Port of Thessaloniki (Pier A)

Is there an audio guide for White Tower of Thessaloniki?

Yes. White Tower of Thessaloniki has its audio stories in the Roots Earth app: a short introduction and a deeper story, in English, German, Spanish, Italian, French, Dutch and Albanian.

It is place 1 of the 44 Thessaloniki places in the app, at 40.6264, 22.9483. Every one of the other 43 places in the list above has the same two stories.

Roots Earth is not a guided tour: you choose the place on the city's map of places and play its story yourself.

How to use Roots Earth in Thessaloniki

Open Roots Earth and choose Thessaloniki. The city has its own map of places with all 44 of them on it. Tap the place you are standing in front of, or any other, and play its short introduction or its deeper story. You decide what to listen to and in which order.

You can listen in English, German, Spanish, Italian, French, Dutch and Albanian, and there is no account. Download a city's audio, then it plays without a connection.

In full

All 44 places in Thessaloniki, in the app's order, with their coordinates.

All 44 places in Thessaloniki, with coordinates

Every place below has a short introduction and a deeper story in the Roots Earth app, in English, German, Spanish, Italian, French, Dutch and Albanian. The names, the coordinates (latitude, longitude) and the one line descriptions are the app's own catalogue values of 15 September 2026; a place without a line here has none that this page can print.

1. White Tower of Thessaloniki

Coordinates
40.6264, 22.9483
In one line
A cylindrical Ottoman tower on the waterfront, built in the 15th century over a Byzantine fortification. Once a seaward bastion and infamous prison, it was whitewashed in 1890 and is now the recognised symbol of Thessaloniki.

2. Arch of Galerius (Kamara)

Coordinates
40.63222, 22.95139
In one line
A Roman triumphal arch raised around the year 303 to celebrate the emperor Galerius and his victory over the Sassanid Persians. Once an eight-pillared gateway across the Via Egnatia, its surviving marble piers still carry vivid battle reliefs.

3. Rotunda of Galerius

Coordinates
40.63333, 22.95292
In one line
A massive domed cylinder built around the year 306 as part of the emperor Galerius's palace complex. Later a Christian church and then an Ottoman mosque, it preserves rare early golden mosaics beneath one of antiquity's great surviving domes.

4. Church of Saint Demetrios (Hagios Demetrios)

Coordinates
40.63889, 22.94778
In one line
The great five-aisled basilica dedicated to Thessaloniki's patron saint, built over the site of his martyrdom. Famed for early Byzantine mosaics and a martyr's crypt, it is part of a UNESCO World Heritage group and the city's most beloved church.

5. Aristotelous Square

Coordinates
40.63238, 22.94094
In one line
Thessaloniki's grand civic square, designed in 1918 by the French architect Ernest Hébrard after the great fire and built mostly in the 1950s. Its curved arcaded facades frame a monumental view from the city down to the sea.

6. Hagia Sophia of Thessaloniki

Coordinates
40.63278, 22.94694
In one line
An early Byzantine domed church, built in the 7th to 8th century on an older basilica site and long the cathedral of Thessaloniki. Its dome carries a celebrated Ascension mosaic, and it forms part of a UNESCO World Heritage group.

7. Archaeological Museum of Thessaloniki

Coordinates
40.625, 22.95389
In one line
Thessaloniki's principal museum of ancient Macedonia, housed in a modernist building designed by Patroklos Karantinos and opened in 1962. Its collections range from prehistory to Rome, including the famed Derveni Krater and the Derveni Papyrus.

8. Museum of Byzantine Culture

Coordinates
40.6239, 22.955
In one line
A purpose-built museum, opened in 1994 to a design by Kyriakos Krokos, devoted entirely to the Byzantine and post-Byzantine world of Macedonia. Its eleven galleries trace daily life, faith, and empire through mosaics, icons, coins, and sculpture.

9. Heptapyrgion Fortress (Yedi Kule)

Coordinates
40.644, 22.962
In one line
A fortress crowning the northeastern corner of Thessaloniki's acropolis, its name meaning "seven towers" though ten survive. Built across Byzantine and Ottoman centuries, it served as the city's main stronghold and, until 1989, a notorious prison.

10. Walls of Thessaloniki

Coordinates
40.6425, 22.95444
In one line
The great fortifications that ringed Thessaloniki, first raised under Cassander and rebuilt across late Roman and Byzantine centuries. Long stretches still climb the hillside through Ano Poli, part of a UNESCO World Heritage ensemble.

11. Church of the Acheiropoietos

Coordinates
40.63472, 22.94778
In one line
A fifth-century three-aisled basilica, among the oldest surviving churches in Thessaloniki and one of the best preserved early Christian basilicas in Greece. Its marble columns, mosaic-lined arches, and a Roman bath beneath earned it UNESCO World Heritage status.

12. Roman Forum (Ancient Agora)

Coordinates
40.638, 22.946
In one line
The political and commercial heart of Roman Thessaloniki, a two-terraced forum with colonnaded stoas, a small odeon, and an underground cryptoporticus. Buried for centuries, it was rediscovered by accident in the 1960s during planned courthouse construction.

13. Church of Hosios David (Latomou Monastery)

Coordinates
40.64167, 22.95222
In one line
A small late fifth-century church in the upper town, once the katholikon of the Latomou Monastery. Its apse holds a rare pre-Iconoclast mosaic of a youthful, beardless Christ in glory, a treasure of early Byzantine art and a UNESCO World Heritage monument.

14. Church of Panagia Chalkeon

Coordinates
40.63694, 22.94361
In one line
A brick cross-in-square church built in 1028, its warm red walls earning it the name "Red Church." Known as the Virgin of the Coppersmiths after the old metalworkers' quarter nearby, it is a UNESCO World Heritage monument.

15. Church of the Holy Apostles

Coordinates
40.64284, 22.93755
In one line
A five-domed Byzantine church completed around 1329 as a monastery dedicated to the Virgin. Its patterned brickwork and late Palaiologan mosaics rank among the finest of the era, and it forms part of the UNESCO-listed monuments of Thessaloniki.

16. Church of Saint Panteleimon

Coordinates
40.63306, 22.95111
In one line
A late Byzantine cross-in-square church of the 14th century, once a monastery and later the Ottoman İshakiye Mosque. Restored to Orthodox worship in 1912, it belongs to the UNESCO-listed monuments of Thessaloniki.

17. Vlatades Monastery

Coordinates
40.6418, 22.9545
In one line
A 14th-century Byzantine monastery high in the Upper Town, founded by disciples of Gregory Palamas and still active today. Its terraced gardens command sweeping views over the city and the Thermaic Gulf, and it belongs to the UNESCO-listed monuments of Thessaloniki.

18. Bey Hamam (Baths of Paradise)

Coordinates
40.6357, 22.9453
In one line
The oldest Ottoman bathhouse in Thessaloniki, built in 1444 under Sultan Murad the Second. A double bath for men and women, it kept the name Baths of Paradise until 1968 and now hosts cultural events and exhibitions on Egnatia Street.

19. Hamza Bey Mosque (Alcazar)

Coordinates
40.6375, 22.9417
In one line
One of the oldest Ottoman mosques in Thessaloniki, founded around the 1460s by Hafsa Hatun and named after the commander Hamza Bey. Later a cinema known as the Alcazar, it stands on Egnatia Street and is being restored as a monument.

20. Yeni Mosque

Coordinates
40.61556, 22.95667
In one line
An eclectic mosque built in 1902 by the architect Vitaliano Poselli for the city's Dönmeh community of crypto-Jewish converts to Islam. Its style blends Ottoman, neoclassical and art nouveau forms, and the building now serves as a municipal cultural and exhibition space.

21. Atatürk Museum

Coordinates
40.63578, 22.95453
In one line
The Thessaloniki birthplace of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder of modern Turkey, born here in 1881. The pink three-story house on Apostolou Pavlou Street, now part of the Turkish consulate, is preserved as a museum with period furnishings and a pomegranate tree planted by his father.

22. Jewish Museum of Thessaloniki

Coordinates
40.63527, 22.9398
In one line
Housed in a 1904 building by Vitaliano Poselli, this museum tells the story of Thessaloniki's Sephardic Jews, once a community so large the city was called the Jerusalem of the Balkans, and the catastrophe that almost erased them.

23. Eleftherias Square

Coordinates
40.63389, 22.93806
In one line
A waterfront square once ringed by grand hotels and banks, where the Young Turk Revolution was proclaimed in 1908. In July 1942 it became the site of a brutal Nazi assembly of the city's Jewish men, now marked by a Holocaust memorial.

24. Aristotle University of Thessaloniki

Coordinates
40.63, 22.95806
In one line
Founded in 1925 and named after the philosopher Aristotle, this is the largest university in Greece, with roughly 88,000 students. Its sprawling central campus, built over a destroyed Jewish cemetery, holds eleven faculties and dozens of schools.

25. Thessaloniki International Fair

Coordinates
40.6278, 22.9554
In one line
Greece's premier exhibition complex, founded in 1926 and held each September across seventeen pavilions in the city centre. Its grounds host the country's largest annual fair, where the Prime Minister traditionally announces national economic policy.

26. OTE Tower

Coordinates
40.62612, 22.95455
In one line
A 76-metre modernist tower built around 1970 on the Thessaloniki fairgrounds, designed by Alexandros Anastasiadis. Its slender spire carries stacked cylindrical discs and a revolving cafe, and Greek State Television's first broadcasts came from here in 1971.

27. Thessaloniki Concert Hall

Coordinates
40.59833, 22.94833
In one line
The city's principal cultural venue, opened in 2000 on Maria Callas Street by the sea. It pairs a traditional 1,400-seat hall with a striking contemporary building by Japanese architect Arata Isozaki, hosting concerts, opera, and conferences.

28. War Museum of Thessaloniki

Coordinates
40.6243, 22.9596
In one line
Opened in 2000 in a restored Poselli barracks of around 1900, this museum traces modern Greek military history in the north, from the Balkan Wars and the First World War through the resistance and liberation of the Second World War.

29. MOMus Museum of Contemporary Art

Coordinates
40.6272, 22.9548
In one line
Founded by citizens in 1979 and now part of the city's umbrella museum organisation, this contemporary art museum holds more than 2,000 works; the Russian avant-garde Costakis Collection belongs to MOMus-Museum of Modern Art.

30. NOESIS Science Center and Technology Museum

Coordinates
40.5625, 22.99528
In one line
A science and technology museum in the suburb of Thermi, rooted in a 1978 technical collection. Its sphere-shaped digital planetarium, wide-screen cosmotheatre and halls of vintage vehicles and ancient Greek inventions draw families and school groups year round.

31. Modiano Market

Coordinates
40.6349, 22.9418
In one line
A grand covered market built from 1922 to 1925 by engineer Eli Modiano and architect J. Oliphant on the site of a former synagogue, raised after the Great Fire of 1917. Long the city's belly of fishmongers and tavernas, it reopened restored as a food and dining hall.

32. Kapani Market (Vlali)

Coordinates
40.6365, 22.9415
In one line
The oldest market in Thessaloniki, recorded since 1498 and named after the Ottoman grain-weighing trade. A warren of open alleys near Aristotelous, it still sells fish, meat, vegetables, spices, olives and cheese to crowds every morning.

33. Ladadika District

Coordinates
40.635, 22.937
In one line
A district near the port whose name means olive oil, once lined with oil and spice warehouses. It survived the Great Fire of 1917, fell into decline and brothels, was listed as heritage in 1985, and now thrives as a nightlife and dining quarter.

34. Ano Poli (Upper Town)

Coordinates
40.642, 22.952
In one line
The old upper town on the hillside below the acropolis, the one quarter that survived the Great Fire of 1917.

35. Seih Sou Forest (Kedrinos Lofos)

Coordinates
40.63877, 22.99207
In one line
The wooded hill rising north of Thessaloniki, covering nearly 3,000 hectares of pine planted from the 1920s onward. Also called Kedrinos Lofos, it serves as the city's green lung for walkers and cyclists, despite a devastating 1997 wildfire.

36. Kalamaria

Coordinates
40.58333, 22.95
In one line
A seaside district southeast of central Thessaloniki, built largely by refugees from Asia Minor after 1922. Its ten quarters carry names from lost homelands, and its marina at Aretsou draws families along the water each evening.

37. Panorama

Coordinates
40.58333, 23.03333
In one line
An affluent hillside suburb perched around 340 metres up the slopes of Mount Chortiatis, overlooking Thessaloniki and the Thermaic Gulf. It gave the city its beloved trigona, the crisp cream-filled pastries that bear the neighbourhood's name.

38. Toumba Neighbourhood

Coordinates
40.615, 22.971
In one line
A dense working-class district east of central Thessaloniki, named after a prehistoric settlement mound at its heart. Built by Asia Minor refugees after 1922, it is famous today as the home of PAOK football club and its roaring stadium.

39. Toumba Stadium

Coordinates
40.61389, 22.9725
In one line
The home of PAOK FC, opened in 1959 in the dense Toumba district. Holding around 28,700 fans and famed as one of the most intimidating grounds in Greece, supporters call it the Cathedral, and rivals call it the Black Hell.

40. Kaftanzoglio National Stadium

Coordinates
40.6255, 22.967
In one line
Thessaloniki's national athletics and football stadium, opened in 1960 with money from the Kaftantzoglou Foundation. Long the home of Iraklis, it hosted Olympic matches in 2004 and a European cup final in 1973, and seats around 27,500.

41. Alexandreio Melathron (Nick Galis Hall)

Coordinates
40.6269, 22.95722
In one line
Thessaloniki's historic indoor arena, opened in 1966 as Greece's first large basketball hall. Home to Aris and once to PAOK, it was renamed in 2013 for basketball legend Nick Galis and seats around 5,100 for the game.

42. Zeitenlik Allied Military Cemetery

Coordinates
40.65444, 22.93371
In one line
The largest military cemetery in Greece, resting place of around 20,000 Allied soldiers who died on the Salonika Front of the First World War. French, Serbian, British, Italian and Russian dead lie here, dedicated in 1936.

43. Thessaloniki Railway Station

Coordinates
40.64444, 22.92944
In one line
Greece's largest and busiest rail terminal, on Monastiriou Street west of the centre. Designed by Hans Kleinschmidt in a stripped modernist style and inaugurated in 1961, it sprawls across former Ottoman railway land and now anchors the metro's western terminus.

44. Port of Thessaloniki (Pier A)

Coordinates
40.636, 22.922
In one line
The first pier of Thessaloniki's working harbour, where early-twentieth-century cargo warehouses now hold museums of photography and cinema and host the city's film festival each November, turning an industrial waterfront into a thriving cultural quarter beside the Thermaic Gulf.

Roots Earth in short

Roots Earth has audio stories about 5,665 places in 130 cities, 25 countries and 6 regions, written by local people.

  • No account
  • Download a city's audio, then it plays without a connection
  • Audio stories in English and German in every city, and in Spanish, Italian, French, Dutch and Albanian in 126 of the 130 cities

Roots Earth for Android is available on Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rootsearth.app.