Traditional Thessaloniki : What a City!

It's your city and you ought to live it, to listen to it, to respect it, to embrace it, to suck the marrow of it, to rediscover it, through the perpetual bargain, ideally experience it every day as a traveler and why not occasionally as a rookie tourist.

Favorite part for me is not a point, a shop, a district but the city itself, where the tour is part of the journey, after all the 'journey' is what counts. I think that you can only fall in love with a city, if experience it on foot, if you get lost in her hidden corners. This is the only way you can learn its history and hidden secrets.

In Thessaloniki, you have to start from her interior's natural gate, the port, where all-year-round, you can discover art offered in stores or museums and admire from afar, our symbol, the White Tower. Just above, between the paved streets and narrows, you will cross by buildings from other eras, colorful facades and quaint restaurants or cafes, while reaching to "Ladadika area". If you walk north from Ladadika you will find the alternative area of Thessalonki, Valaoritou street.

You can get lost in "Fragkogeitonia" of trade, the old house 'Allatini' that the garden later turned into 'Malakopi Arcade', the liveliness, the sounds and modern spaces in Syngrou str, Vilaras str., Frangon str. and Leonta Sofou str.

The Aristotelis square will offer you visual pleasures. If you stand at the junction of Aristotelous square and Egnatia str. and look down the sea you will be given a sense of perspective that brings Olympus mountain right in front of your eyes.

Now look behind you. The imposing Ancient Roman market is a few meters from where you are and the Bit Bazaar (market of 'Pseiras') is a five minute walk on your left full of antique shops and bars, and special taverns signed with words of Kolokotronis and Loudovikos of Anogia!

The Upper Town (old town), after surviving from the Great Fire of 1917, with its cobbled streets, its small clearings, its building with a Macedonian Architecture, and its Temples like that of Saint Nikolaos Orfanos, will take you on a magical journey through time, ending up at Eptapyrgio and the Acropolis of the city.

So up there, where the view is breathtaking, you can express yourself by saying: What a City!

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