Like a cut in Athenian fabric, a narrow street stretches from Syntagma Square to Athinas Street that changes its name four times along the way: From Karagiorgi Servias to Perikleous after crossing Lekka, to Athinaidos after Evangelistrias, and then to Agias Irinis on the latter. foot, after Aiolou Street.
So narrow and crowded, you can only walk for it by jumping on and off the pavement into the road. But as you approach Agia Irini Square, the church named after it rises through the sky to remind us where we are, as a compass of historical direction, a ‘pointing to what is permanent outside the ship.
There, near Agia Irini, the bust of Athena is one of the most beautiful faces that represent her city in the past. You can see the goddess in front of 10 Athinaidos, just before Aiolou. It overlooks the square and is at the heart of the most beautiful neoclassical building in this area, which is now home to a hotel. I always raise my eyes to Athena when I pass. And she is a rare type of Athena, different from the one at the Academy of Athens or at the old School of Arsakeio, which now houses the Council of State, the highest administrative court in the country.
This Athena is inspired by the so-called “Varvakeion Athena,” without scientific basis, after it was found near the ancient (and now lost forever) School of Varvakeio on Athinas Street , in 1880. That Athena, now part of the collection of the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, wears a helmet decorated with horses. Here, in front of Athinaidos Street, we see a variation on that theme, in a loose and impressive “conversation” with the historical foundations of the city.
It would be an interesting study to collect the different types of Athenas and other deities as they are represented in different forms on the buildings of Athens, as folk art, in response to the intellectual and native need to remember and connect.
Under the balcony with sphinxes and lyre, the Athena on Athinaidos Street tells us the story of the urban transformation of Athens in the late 19th and early 20th century, a time when social mobility and economic freedom were changing the world. Built by the second generation of Athenian homeowners during the city’s Belle Epoque, in an improved form, it was elegantly decorated and built almost like a local palazzo.
And behind this beautiful facade is the story of Themistoklis Michalopoulos, the son of a silk merchant from Sparta and the daughter of a Greek War of Independence warrior. It seems from historical research, moreover, that Michalopoulos was a very cultivated man. In fact, he wrote The Book of the Modern Greek Alphabet in 1892 and a book on the importance of expanding the scope of public education in 1905, as well as educating the young kings Georgios II and Alexandros. He was also the MP for the Attica-Viotia region.
So, if anything, the goddess Athena on Athinaidos Street reminds us of the stories buried between layers of memory and oblivion.
