Ano Poli scores 21 out of 100 for property crime — above-average crime, on a scale where 50 is the average for Greece. It is home to about 1,287 people at 15,626 people per km².
The score is absolute, not a ranking: 50 is the offence rate for Greece as a whole, 100 the safest end of the scale and 0 the least safe, and every doubling of the rate costs the same number of points wherever you are. Regional units are scored from Eurostat's police-recorded offence rates per 100,000 inhabitants. Greece publishes nothing finer, so municipalities and districts share out their region's measured rate by how built-up they are and by documented local reporting — treat those two levels as an estimate, not a count of reported crime.
What Ano Poli is actually like
The one large quarter the 1917 fire largely spared, so the Ottoman and Byzantine street plan survives inside the upper walls, around the Trigonio tower, Vlatades and the Eptapyrgio fortress. It is genuinely residential — long-settled families, students, and a fast-growing layer of short-let guests — and visitors come for monuments, tavernas and the view down over the Thermaic Gulf. The municipality began clearing derelict, repeatedly burnt buildings here in October 2025.
After dark
Lanes are steep, cobbled, poorly lit and very quiet after midnight. The realistic hazards are a turned ankle, a wrong turn and the occasional derelict plot rather than street crime.
What to watch for
- Derelict and repeatedly burnt buildings across the eastern and central Ano Poli, which the municipality says attract rubbish, rough sleepers and crime
- Steep unlit cobbled lanes and stair-streets between Eptapyrgiou and Olympiados late at night
- Vandalism and tagging on the Byzantine walls, Ottoman fountains and the Alatza Imaret
Staying here
Book here for atmosphere if you are happy walking hills — couples, returning visitors, photographers. Skip it if you have heavy luggage, mobility limits, or want bars and a metro entrance downstairs.
Reputation against reality. Its old reputation as a rough hillside slum is long out of date; today the friction is conservation, vandalism and short-let pressure, not crime.
Streets and squares: Eptapyrgiou · Akropoleos · Theotokopoulou · Olympiados · Apostolou Pavlou · Alexandras Papadopoulou
Other neighbourhoods in Thessaloniki
Nearby municipalities
Questions people ask
Is Ano Poli safe?
Ano Poli (Άνω Πόλη) scores 21 out of 100 for property crime on SafetyMap — above-average crime, on a scale where 50 is the Greek average. That is based on the police-recorded offence rate of its regional unit, apportioned by how built-up Ano Poli is and by documented local reporting. That works out to about 3,164 property offences and 177.9 violent offences per 100,000 residents a year.
Is Ano Poli safe at night?
Ano Poli records more crime than most of Greece, so stay on busy, lit streets late at night, keep phones and bags out of sight, and use licensed taxis rather than walking long distances alone.
How does Ano Poli compare with the rest of Thessaloniki?
Ano Poli scores 21 out of 100 for property crime, against 29 for Thessaloniki as a whole — worse than its surroundings.