The old town is the essential part of Xanthi — a hillside quarter of tobacco-era mansions in rich colours, overhanging upper floors, and narrow cobbled streets that climb steeply above the modern centre. The Clock Tower, the sole remnant of a mosque destroyed in a 1941 fire, stands at the edge of the upper town and is visible from throughout the city. The Folk Museum in a restored 19th-century mansion gives the best context for the tobacco trade that produced the old town's architecture. The Saturday bazaar is the weekly highlight — one of the largest traditional markets in northern Greece, running since the Ottoman period.