Pylaia

Pylaia (Greek: Πυλαία) is a suburb of the Thessaloniki Urban Area and was former municipality in the regional unit of Thessaloniki, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Pylaia-Chortiatis, of which it is a municipal unit. Pylaia covers 24.379 km with 4,5 km of coastline extending along the shores of the Thermaic Gulf and had a 2001 census population of 22,744 inhabitants. Pylaia is relatively sparsely populated for a municipality within the Thessaloniki Urban Area. The first reference to Pylaia is found in the historian Thucydides, in 319 BC, under the name Strepsa. It was later known as Kapoutzida, from the Turkish word kapıcı ("gatekeeper"), deriving from the guards watching over the city walls...