Pylaia ( el, Πυλαία) is a former municipality in the Thessaloniki Prefecture of Greece. In the 2011 local government reform, Thessaloniki Prefecture became the regional unit of Thessaloniki (without boundary changes), and Pylaia became a part of the new municipality of Pylaia-Chortiatis. Pylaia continues under its old boundaries as a municipal unit within Pylaia-Chortiatis. Pylaia covers 24.379 km² with 4.5 km of coastline extending along the shores of the

Thermaic Gulf The Thermaic Gulf (), also called the Gulf of Salonika and the Macedonian Gulf, is a gulf constituting the northwest corner of the Aegean Sea. The city of Thessaloniki is at its northeastern tip, and it is bounded by Pieria Imathia and Laris ...

and had a population of 34,625 at the 2011 census. Pylaia is relatively sparsely populated for a municipal unit within the

Thessaloniki Urban Area The Thessaloniki metropolitan area or larger urban zone (LUZ) is the complete area covered and directly influenced by Thessaloniki. The metropolitan area traditionally consisted of the municipality of Thessaloniki and its immediate surroundings, w ...

History

The first reference to Pylaia is found in the historian

Thucydides Thucydides (; grc, , }; BC) was an Athenian historian and general. His '' History of the Peloponnesian War'' recounts the fifth-century BC war between Sparta and Athens until the year 411 BC. Thucydides has been dubbed the father of " scienti ...

, 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 of

Byzantine The Byzantine Empire, also referred to as the Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantium, was the continuation of the Roman Empire primarily in its eastern provinces during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, when its capital city was Constantinopl ...

Thessaloniki. The current name came into general use in 1927, and is derived from the word Pyle (πύλη), meaning gateway and referring to the Eastern Entrance of the city.

Sports clubs

* Ethnikos Pylaias, football, volleyball, founded 1950

Communities

* Eleones

References

External links

Official website
Populated places in Thessaloniki (regional unit) {{CentralMacedonia-geo-stub