Pylaia (Greek: Πυλαία, romanized: Pylaía) is a former municipality in the Thessaloniki Prefecture of Greece.
[2] Pylaia covers 24.379 km2[3] with 4.5 km of coastline extending along the shores of the Thermaic Gulf and had a population of 36,843 at the 2021 census.
Pylaia is relatively sparsely populated for a municipal unit within the Thessaloniki Urban Area.
It was later known as Kapoutzida, from the Turkish word kapıcı ("gatekeeper"), deriving from the guards watching over the city walls of Byzantine Thessaloniki.
The current name came into general use in 1927, and is derived from the word Pyle (πύλη), meaning gateway and referring to the Eastern Entrance of the city.