ArchitectureThessaloniki · Competition win, not yet built
Masterplan to link Thessaloniki's monuments into one pedestrian network
Apostolopoulos Tasoulis won a public competition with Armosi, a plan tying over seventy historic sites along Egnatia Street into walkable public space.
Thessaloniki wears its history in layers: Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman, Jewish and modern, often within a few streets of each other. Armosi, the masterplan by Athens-based studio Apostolopoulos Tasoulis that took first prize in a public competition, sets out to stitch more than seventy monuments and archaeological sites into a single public landscape. It runs along the old east–west artery of Egnatia Street and its crossing with Aristotelous Street, and draws on UNESCO's Historic Urban Landscape approach.
The idea is to make the city easier to read without adding clutter. A continuous, pale paved surface acts as a neutral backdrop, with matching lighting, signage and low-key street furniture. Site edges would be reworked with underground facilities, new entrances and light enclosures. The Rotunda would gain a new square around it, the imperial axis through the Galerian Complex would be restored, and Dikastirion Square would become a new axial way into the Roman Forum.
Existing planting is stretched into green corridors linked to the metro and buses, creating calmer, traffic-light routes where the ruins become part of everyday walking.
This is a competition-winning proposal sent in to designboom by the architects, with no timeline given. For now, the sites themselves are the reason to go, and the plan a good map for joining them up on foot.
Our summary of a story from designboom, published 16 October 2026. Read the original
8 photos
From designboom