​​Gate of Asvestohori Sanatorium – G. Papanikolaou General Hospital​

The hospital is located outside the Exohi settlement, close to Asvestohori village, in the Municipality of Pilea Hortiatis. The building complex is connected to events that took place in Thessaloniki, during the 20th century.

In autumn 1915, French and British army forces disembarked in Thessaloniki and established a new front of the WWI, the Macedonian Front (or Salonica Front). Greece officially joined the Entente coalition in the summer of 1916. By 1917, more than 600,000 British, French, Russian, Serbian, Italian and Greek men had arrived in the area. British and French troops camped outside the village of Hortiatis and remained there until 1918.

The site of the current hospital was chosen as an infirmary by the British Army Medical Service, due to the healthy climate of the area. In the interwar period, tuberculosis was a scourge for the population. In 1920, the Greek state founded the Asvestohori Sanatorium, which was built on the site of the old infirmary.

On 9 April 1941, German troops invaded Greece. The day before, 12 residents of the Sanatorium were helped to escape and became primary members of the resistance. The first Greek resistance organisation, called "Eleftheria" (freedom), was founded in Thessaloniki, shortly after the invasion. Many patients and employees of the Sanatorium joined and actively participated in the National Resistance.

By July 1944, the operations of the resistance groups had been exposed. The Nazis arrested and executed 20 men from Asvestohori village in retaliation. Most of them were employees or residens of the sanatorium.

The hospital operated until the 1970s and was converted into a general hospital in the 1980s. Many of the old buildings within the hospital are used today as treatment units or administrative offices. The old entrance to the sanatorium, the gate that separated the outside world from the residents of the "tuberculosis town", is preserved intact to remember the history of the area.