Thessaloniki city private tour (4 hours)

What fits in four hours?

Four stops and 19 minutes at the wheel, routed on OpenStreetMap without traffic: the morning begins at the White Tower on the seafront for 50 minutes; 3 min and 1.4 km to the Rotunda and the Arch of Galerius for 45; 3 min and 1 km to the church of Agios Dimitrios for 40; 4 min and 2.4 km up to the Heptapyrgion in Ano Poli for an hour; 9 min and 4.6 km back down to the seafront. Twenty-six minutes are left loose for a coffee or a longer look. From a hotel the first and the last leg follow the address, and the White Tower is 3 minutes by car from Aristotelous Square on the portal’s own count. For the country round the city, the Thessaloniki page compares this tour with the two 8-hour days, to Pella and Vergina and to Dion and Mount Olympus. For the Jewish city, the synagogues, the museum and the memorials, the Jewish heritage day keeps the same streets for five hours with a licensed guide, quoted by the office.

The White Tower: six floors of the city’s history

Built where the sea wall met the eastern land wall, the tower in its present form is a 15th-century work in place of an earlier Byzantine one, circular, 33.90 metres high and 21.70 across, six storeys and a ground floor, as the Ministry’s portal describes it; it was Lion Tower in the 16th century, Fortress of Kalamaria in the 18th, Blood Tower for its years as a prison, and White Tower from 1883, when it was whitewashed on the Sultan’s order. Inside, an exhibition on Thessaloniki through the ages, a theme to a floor, told more by multimedia and panels than by objects: space and time on the ground floor, the city’s transformations on the first, monuments and history on the second, the routes of commerce on the fourth, leisure and culture on the fifth. The ticket is 8 EUR (checked 14 Oct 2026, hh.gr), reduced 4 EUR (checked 14 Oct 2026, hh.gr); open every day of the week, 08:00 to 21:00 from May to October and 08:30 to 15:30 in April and in winter, last admission 20 minutes before closing. The portal lists WiFi, names no lift, and places info points with a virtual tour of the exhibition on the ground floor for visitors with mobility impairment. Fifty minutes cover the climb through the floors; the driver waits nearby with the vehicle.

The Rotunda and the Arch of Galerius

Built in the reign of Galerius as a temple or as the emperor’s own mausoleum, a riddle nobody has settled, the Rotunda is a circle 24 metres across with walls 6.30 metres thick and 28 metres high, turned into a church and later a mosque and named for Saint George after 1912, as the portal tells it. The dome and the arches of its eight apses carry a mosaic of the early Byzantine period in gold and coloured tiles, figures the portal takes for martyrs standing before imagined architecture, and at the crown, where the mosaic is lost, a charcoal sketch of the figure it once showed. The ticket is 10 EUR (checked 14 Oct 2026, hh.gr), reduced 5 EUR (checked 14 Oct 2026, hh.gr); closed every Tuesday all year, open 08:00 to 20:00 from April to September, shorter through October, 08:30 to 15:30 in winter; the portal lists WC and accessibility and puts it 9 minutes by car from Aristotelous Square. The Arch of Galerius, the Kamara, is the second monument of the stop, seen from the street in the same 45 minutes, with no ticket. The Thessaloniki page prints the Rotunda’s full table.

Agios Dimitrios, with no ticket we can print

The church of Agios Dimitrios is the one stop of the four with no page on the Ministry’s portal and no official page of its own authority that states a ticket or hours, so this page prints neither and promises nothing it cannot source: forty minutes are planned there, the driver waits outside with the vehicle, and the timing of the visit round the services of the day is the driver’s orientation on the morning. It is 3 minutes by car from the Rotunda on our routing, and the hour in Ano Poli follows it uphill.

Ano Poli: the Heptapyrgion and the walls

The last hour is the high one. The Heptapyrgion, Yedikule in its Ottoman name, stands at the north-eastern end of the walls, as the portal describes it: a fortress made a prison in 1890 and kept as one until 1989, when it passed to the Ministry of Culture, open to the public today and listed by UNESCO as World Heritage. The ticket is 10 EUR (checked 14 Oct 2026, hh.gr), reduced 5 EUR (checked 14 Oct 2026, hh.gr); closed every Tuesday, open 08:00 to 19:00 in April and May, only 10:00 to 17:00 from June to October, 08:30 to 15:30 in winter, which is why the tour keeps it for last; the portal lists WC and parking and counts 15 minutes by car from Aristotelous Square, 45 on foot. The Trigonion Tower beside it, which the portal sets against the battlements of the White Tower, has a ticket of its own and opens every Friday by appointment, so the hour takes it from outside; the walk along the walls and the view from Ano Poli fill the rest. The hours as the portal prints them:

• 1 Apr to 31 May: Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, 08:00 to 19:00, last entry 18:40
• 1 Jun to 31 Oct: Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, 10:00 to 17:00, last entry 16:40
• 1 Nov to 31 Mar: Monday, 08:30 to 15:30, last entry 15:10
• 1 Nov to 31 Mar: Wednesday, 08:30 to 15:30, last entry 15:10
• 1 Nov to 31 Mar: Thursday, 08:30 to 15:30, last entry 15:10
• 1 Nov to 31 Mar: Friday, 08:30 to 15:30, last entry 15:10
• 1 Nov to 31 Mar: Saturday, 08:30 to 15:30, last entry 15:10
• 1 Nov to 31 Mar: Sunday, 08:30 to 15:30, last entry 15:10

Checked 14 Oct 2026, hh.gr.

Driver or licensed guide?

Three of the four stops are Ministry sites, and inside them guiding is reserved to state-licensed guides by Law 5121/2024; the church is a church. Our driver drives, waits at every stop with the vehicle and gives the practical orientation, where the desk is and where to meet; a licensed guide for the morning is booked ahead on request and quoted with the day. The driver-or-guide guide explains the rule.

Steps, shade, toilets and lunch

No meal stop in four hours; the hour in Ano Poli leaves room for a coffee at your own expense, and the morning ends by the seafront in time for lunch on your own. Toilets are listed by the portal at the Rotunda and the Heptapyrgion, with parking at the Heptapyrgion; at the White Tower it lists WiFi and nothing else, and describes six storeys and a ground floor without naming a lift; for the church it has no page. Steps and shade no official page counts, so no figure is printed: the tower is a climb by its own description, Ano Poli is uphill, and the driver’s orientation at each stop covers where the vehicle waits, how far the walk is, where the steps, the shade and the nearest toilets are. Flat shoes for the paving of Ano Poli, a hat for the walls in summer.

What does it cost for our group?

The 4-hour rate card, per group: 300 EUR for up to three guests in a sedan, 400 EUR for four to seven in a minivan, 100 EUR a head for four and 67 EUR for six; from eight the rate is per person. Three tickets are paid at the desks, the White Tower, the Rotunda and the Heptapyrgion, printed above with their dates; the church has none we can print, and the Trigonion Tower’s own ticket belongs to a Friday appointment. The site takes no payment: the office confirms by email, the driver is paid on the day. The price guide prints the rate card by hours and party size.

Where do we meet the driver?

At the door of your hotel in Thessaloniki at the agreed time, and back to it; the figures above start at the White Tower, 3 minutes by car from Aristotelous Square by the portal, and the first and the last leg follow your address. From June to October the Heptapyrgion opens at 10:00, so a summer morning starts at the White Tower and reaches the fortress after ten; in winter every site closes at 15:30 and the four hours sit in the morning. The Thessaloniki page sets this tour beside the two day trips and prints the White Tower’s and the Rotunda’s tables.