The centre was established in 1989 in the restored Villa Ahmet Kapuji, which was built in 1898. Eleftherios Venizelos used the historic building when he was in Thessaloniki in 1916–17, and in later years it was a high school. The centre houses the collection of contemporary Greek art owned by the National Bank’s Cultural Foundation.

The Cultural Centre is a department of the National Bank which was established in 1989 with the aim of contributing to the intellectual life of northern Greece. It mounts exhibitions, holds lectures, shows films, and liaises with other cultural institutions in Thessaloniki.

It also mounts exhibitions on the history of Thessaloniki, Mount Athos, and northern Greece in general, backed up by scholarly papers, publications, and experimental lessons in landscape painting for schools.

It mounts frequent exhibitions of visual art, applied art, and architecture. The first half of 2000 saw an exhibition titled Likourgos Koyevinas: Drawings and Copperplate Engravings, three exhibitions of photographs by Nick Wapplington (England), Ulf Lundin (Sweden), and Hristina Vazou (Greece) as part of the Photosynkyria festival, and an exhibition of autochrome photographs titled Thessaloniki 1913 and 1918: The First Colour Photographs of the Century.