Greece · Central Macedonia · Thessaloníki
Toumba, Thessaloníki — Area Guide & Where to Stay
Toumba is a densely built residential district on the eastern slopes of Thessaloníki, well east of the seafront centre. It splits into two halves, Ano Toumba on the higher ground and Kato Toumba below. The quarter is known across Greece for one thing above all: Toumba Stadium, the home ground of the football club PAOK. Apartment blocks, not monuments, define it.
About Toumba
Where to stay in Toumba
Where you base yourself shapes the visit — here's the character of each area.
Few travellers book a room in Toumba, and that is worth saying plainly. It is a lived-in residential quarter, thin on hotels and shaped around the people who live here rather than around visitors. The reason to stay is narrow but real: on match days the lanes near Toumba Stadium fill with PAOK supporters, and a bed nearby drops you into that atmosphere.
Anyone here mainly to sightsee is better off in the seafront centre of Thessaloníki, a short bus ride west, where the hotels and the famous monuments cluster. Come for the football; sleep in town.
About Toumba
What are the main landmarks in Toumba?
Toumba's landmark is not a church but a football ground. Toumba Stadium, the home of PAOK, dominates the district and pulls crowds from across the city on match nights. This quarter also keeps the ancient mound it is named for, a prehistoric settlement site of the kind archaeologists call a toumba, built up layer on layer over centuries.
The city's celebrated monuments lie elsewhere. The White Tower stands on the distant seafront, and the Rotunda sits near the old centre, both a ride away from this hillside.
What is the history of Toumba?
The district's name comes from a toumba, the Greek word for an ancient settlement mound. Such mounds rose across northern Greece in the Bronze and early Iron Age, built up century after century as timber-and-mudbrick houses collapsed and were rebuilt on the same spot; they answer to the tell sites of the Near East. One such prehistoric mound stood on this eastern edge of Thessaloníki and lent the quarter its name.
The modern neighbourhood is far younger. It grew through the twentieth century as the city spread inland from the shore, filling the slopes with the dense apartment blocks that define it.
Where is Toumba?
The district climbs the hills of Thessaloníki's east side, above and behind the old centre. Charilaou adjoins it to the south, while Triandria sits to the north-west. Higher up, the city's ring road traces the crest of the slope; downhill to the west the ground falls toward the Thermaic Gulf. The sea stays a distant view.
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More areas in Thessaloníki
Updated July 2026