It was September 6, 1959, when one of the most legendary football stadiums in the Greek territory opened its gates. Toumba, the home ground of PAOK, began a decades-long story full of emotion, excitement, and heartbreak, carrying from its very foundations the sweat and love of the people who make up the club.
PAOK’s first home became a reality roughly two years after its founding. With the absorption of AEK Thessaloniki—in practice, the creation of a united Pan-Thessalonian club formed by Constantinopolitan refugees—the club also acquired the ground at Syntrivani, where the School of Theology of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTH) stands today. The pitch required significant work before it could host the team’s needs. During this time, fans had to form security groups to protect the club’s structure from nationalists of all kinds who tried to tear down the club of the “Turk-spawns.” Eventually, the new stadium was ready by 1932 and, as seen in historical photos, filled to bursting. The small wooden stands reached right up to the pitch, and their low height often allowed balls to fly into the adjacent Jewish cemetery—giving rise to the phrase “he sent it to the graves.”
With its ground in the heart of Thessaloniki, PAOK grew to become the most popular club in the city and in Northern Greece more broadly over the following decades, despite not yet having won a national title. The Syntrivani stadium witnessed great moments, becoming the second ground in Greece (after Leoforos) to have floodlights, making nighttime matches possible. However, this home was too small to contain a club that was growing by the day.
The presence of two strong personalities—the “iron president” Dimitris Dimadis and the “patriarch of presidents” Giorgos Charalampidis—at the helm of the club led to developments in the 1950s that would achieve the miracle of relocating the football team.
AUTH decided to expropriate the land around what was then the old Idadie building, constructed in 1888 on Hamidie Street and functioning as a Public Administration school of the Ottoman Empire. This meant that the Syntrivani stadium would have to be demolished to make way for the School of Theology, while the Iraklis stadium—granted in 1908 by Ottoman authorities to the successor of the Philharmonic Society—would be replaced by Chemistry Square. Thus, PAOK had to find a new place to house “the glory and joy” of its thousands of fans, the heartbeat of an entire city.
The actions of the club’s two leaders secured the allocation of land from the National Defense Fund at a cost of 1.5 million drachmas, paid in twenty semiannual installments. To make this possible, the club’s supporters contributed financially by buying lottery tickets in support of PAOK Stadium’s construction, sold for 20 drachmas each. For several years, they also paid a relatively high ticket price (200 drachmas, equivalent to €62 today), with 15% of revenue dedicated to repaying the land purchase and stadium construction. But they also contributed physically, working countless “black-and-white shifts” to keep the project going. As a result, the stadium was completed in record time—construction began in the spring of 1958 and was finished by mid-1959. The architect was Minas Trembelas, the civil engineer Antonis Triglianos, while the head of the construction committee was the Minister of National Defense of the ERE government, Air Marshal Giorgos Themelis.
The ground was moved from the heart of the city to the heart of the refugee neighborhoods, giving the club’s identity even greater meaning. The initial version of the stadium, which unlike Syntrivani had a running track and spaces for other sports departments of the club, could hold 20,000 spectators. This gradually increased to 45,000, with a record attendance set in the 1976–77 season, when 45,252 fans turned up on December 19. Two years earlier, on September 16, 1975, 45,200 tickets were sold for the European match against Johan Cruyff’s Barcelona, which PAOK won 1–0. Among the stadium’s historic nights is, without a doubt, the first floodlit game—a friendly against AC Milan.
PAOK’s first opponent at the inauguration of the new stadium was AEK, invited for a friendly that ended 1–0. The first official match followed on October 25 against Megas Alexandros Katerinis, with the hosts winning 3–2. That was also the first season of the unified national championship of the First Division, with PAOK remaining to this day one of only three teams to have participated in it without interruption.
While the stadium’s capacity increased in its early years, it later began to shrink due to safety regulations. Initially, the 1978 earthquake caused part of Gate 8 to collapse, forcing the team to temporarily move to Kaftanzoglio. In the wake of the Karaiskakis Stadium tragedy on February 8, 1981, new regulations led to further reductions. In 1998, the installation of seats in all stands set the capacity at 28,700—a number that remains today.
In a few years, this current ground will be known as the “Old Toumba,” and a new miracle will be required—with the joint efforts of the administration, the fans, and political leadership—so that the greatest club of half the country may finally acquire a stadium worthy of its modern ambitions. Those who have lived moments of their lives on the concrete of this authentic Toumba—now aging, especially on its southern side—will always have their own stories. Thankfully, unlike Syntrivani, those stories won’t remain trapped in yellowing archive pages or faded photographs, but in videos that replay the life of an entire black-and-white city in its truest colors.
