This article focuses on the materiality of the Hamza Bey Mosque/Alcazar cinema building in Thessaloniki and its role in the shaping of subjective and collective experiences of the city. It follows its trajectory through highly transitional, historical times, defined by massive successive demographic shifts in the wider area and by major political and social transformations. Instead of exploring Hamza Bey Mosque and its ambivalent status as a historical monument in relation to the top‑down state policy on cultural heritage, this article intends to restore a layer of the city’s history through the study of the interplay between materiality, inter-sensoriality and the affective responses to the transition of the city of Thessaloniki from the Ottoman Empire to the Greek state.