 Kalamaria is a suburban city in the Thessaloniki Prefecture located about 5 km southeast of downtown Thessaloniki. The municipal population of 87,312 (as of 2001) is the second-largest in Macedonia and the ninth-largest in Greece, and has increased 8% since the 1991 census.
The city was created in the early 1920s to house refugees from the Greek diaspora in Georgia and Asia Minor, who fled or were forcibly repatriated to Greece as a result of the Greco-Turkish War. As many as 100,000 refugees relocated to Thessaloniki, primarily to the city's suburbs. Refugees of Pontic descent mainly relocated in Kalamaria, and the city population is predominantly of Pontic descent to this day. |
