Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 04/06/2026 17:15:00

The Thessaloniki branch of the international Museum of Illusions franchise opened on Doxis Street in the central commercial district of the city in 2020, occupying a converted ground-floor commercial space a few minutes walk from the famous White Tower waterfront landmark. The venue is one of two branches of the international franchise operating in Greece, alongside the slightly earlier Athens branch on Ermou Street. The museum follows the standard arrangement of the international franchise, with a continuous walk-through experience across around forty individual interactive optical and perceptual illusion installations spread over two floors of the converted building. Each room or zone focuses on a particular type of illusion, with the visit progressing from simple classical static optical puzzles in the entrance galleries through to the more elaborate immersive installations on the upper levels. The famous Ames room, the trapezoidal perspective chamber originally designed by the American ophthalmologist Adelbert Ames Jr in 1946, occupies one of the principal rooms of the visit. The room appears completely rectangular when viewed from the designated peephole at one end but is in fact strongly distorted in three dimensions, with the result that visitors entering the room appear to grow or shrink dramatically as they walk between the two back corners. The infinity mirror room creates the visual impression of an endless three-dimensional space stretching away in every direction. The vortex tunnel, a rotating cylindrical passageway crossed by a fixed bridge, produces a powerful illusion of falling forward despite the bridge being completely stable underfoot. The chair illusion room reverses the apparent scale of the various furniture items to produce a visual experience of becoming temporarily small or large. Smaller displays cover the historical background of the various illusions, with reproductions of famous optical puzzles by Maurits Cornelis Escher, Salvador Dali and the various Renaissance and baroque artists who developed early techniques of perspective and trompe l oeil decoration. The visit is self-guided and typically takes around an hour at a moderate pace through the various interactive elements, with the central location making it a convenient stop in any wider visit to the historic districts of central Thessaloniki.