A Thessaloniki park where 46 skeletons were found in mass graves during renovation work has been officially designated a...

A Thessaloniki park where 46 skeletons were found in mass graves during renovation work has been officially designated a historic site by the Greek Ministry of Culture. Culture Minister Lina Mendoni signed the order following a unanimous recommendation from the Central Council of Modern Monuments, protecting the National Resistance Park in the Sykies neighborhood under Greece's 2021 Cultural Heritage Protection Law. The graves were first uncovered in November 2024 during renovation work in the Sykies area. Excavations supervised by the Thessaloniki City Antiquities Authority ran through June 2025. Archaeologists found 46 skeletons in total, with 44 distributed across five mass graves and two more in a disturbed state. Researchers dated the burials to the Greek Civil War period, between 1946 and 1949, and linked them to executions carried out on prisoners held at the Eptapyrgio-Yedi Kule fortress prison, most of them political prisoners and resistance fighters condemned by military tribunals of that era. The site outside the old city walls had already been known as an execution ground during both the German Occupation and the Civil War, with hundreds of political prisoners reportedly killed in the broader area. The land passed to municipal ownership in 1966 and was formally laid out as a park in 1983. A memorial column honoring executed fighters from the 1941 to 1949 resistance and civil war period was placed there in 1997, though the mass graves themselves remained unknown until the 2024 renovation uncovered them. Mendoni said the skeletons are not merely an archaeological find but a historical record of a specific and turbulent period in Greek history. She added that the state has an obligation to identify the remains where possible and return them to surviving family members. The park covers roughly 1,916 square meters in the eastern section of Sykies, adjacent to the historic Eptapyrgio walls, a landmark already deeply tied to Thessaloniki's modern history. #Thessaloniki #Greece #GreekHistory