A new museum in Thessaloniki has opened, placing thousands of artefacts from metro excavation work on public display for the first time.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis inaugurated the Thessalonikeon Mitropolis museum on Saturday. It opened to the public the following day.
The museum occupies the restored A3 military barracks at Pavlos Melas Metropolitan Park. The two-storey building spans roughly 3,000 square metres (32,292 sq ft). The site was once a military base in the city’s western districts, and Greece’s Culture Ministry oversaw the reconstruction.
The collection is drawn from metro excavation sites across the city, according to culture and antiquities officials. It spans more than 2,000 years, from Thessaloniki’s founding in 316/315 BC to the Great Fire of 1917.
Thessaloniki museum brings metro excavation layers into public view
The ground floor covers areas once outside the ancient city walls. Stations covered include New Railway Station, Dimokratias, Sintrivani, Panepistimio, Fleming, and the Pylaia depot. Finds from those sites point to cemeteries, workshops, inns, and storage facilities. Early Christian buildings were found as well, along with traces of a pre-Thessaloniki settlement.
Notable pieces include gold wreaths, funerary stelae, jewellery, larnakes, and decorated sarcophagi dating to the Greek and Roman eras. Frescoes and mosaics from an early Byzantine basilica are also on display.
Greece's latest Thessaloniki museum turns years of metro excavation into a public journey through the city's ancient past, from 316 BC to 1917. pic.twitter.com/6QxiwM5aPa
— Tom Marvolo Riddle (@tom_riddle2025) May 13, 2026
The upper floor covers discoveries from within the ancient walls, primarily from the Venizelou and Agia Sofia stations. Exhibits are arranged along a central road axis, evoking the city’s historical main thoroughfare and the metro line running beneath it.
Outside, visitors can view restored mosaic floors and ancient hypocaust systems. A Late Antiquity villa unearthed near Agia Sofia station between 2017 and 2018 stands beneath a glass enclosure. A pair of marble sarcophagi from Dimokratias station stands in the courtyard.
Mitsotakis touts cultural hub for long-overlooked western districts
Mitsotakis said the project creates a cultural and recreational hub in western Thessaloniki. He added that it brings attention to areas long neglected by the central government.
The Thessaloniki museum is open from 08:30 to 15:30 and closed on Tuesdays. Its purpose is conservation and public education. The project received 14.5 million euros ($16.9 million) from Greece’s Recovery Fund.
Plans call for two additional museums at the same site covering refugee Hellenism and the Greek resistance movement. Local authorities say the project aims to make western Thessaloniki a major cultural destination.
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