Redefining City Experiences and Thematic City Walks: The Case of “Thessaloniki Walking Tours”

Thessaloniki’s recent attempts to transform into an extrovert and attractive urban destination, coincided with the anniversary celebrations and memorials of decisive historical events in the city’s past and the concomitant growing appetite of the public for delving into the city’s multilayered past. Along with numerous conferences, exhibitions, publications and lectures focused on a wide variety of specific issues, a different kind of guided tour undertook the challenge to negotiate the new fields of interest and to showcase less discussed aspects of Thessaloniki’s heritage, approaching from new points of view. An interview with the founder of “Thessaloniki Walking Tours”, the most active and sustainable partnership which offers thematic city walks and new “city experiences”, as well as a mapping of the topics that it covers, highlights the basic aspects and perspectives of this nascent city trend. Starting from the initial approach and the birth of original thematic city tours which are being implemented using innovative guiding techniques, the paper discusses the founder’s view on the market’s response and the possible reasons why new cultural products can lead to successful entrepreneurship in the fields of urban and cultural tourism. The recent expansion of Thessaloniki Walking Tours to Athens, along with trips that it organizes in Greece and abroad, reveal a possible preexisting—or a recently developed—interest of citizens in rediscovering their city, the need for new city experiences, as well as the potential of such platforms to reinforce human relations and create communities.