Greek capital’s oldest ‘new’ district

The Church of ‘Agios Nikolaos’ and the residential area of Neapoli in Athens in 1918. With rare photographic material and contemporary artistic creations, a major exhibition of the Hellenic American Union which opens on Tuesday evening seeks to reintroduce Neapoli, the oldest of the city’s “new” districts in the 19th century, which served both as a spiritual cradle and an anthropological melting pot.

Located between Lycabettus and Strefi hills, Neapoli developed after 1850, when free plots of land were sought in the undeveloped areas northeast of the “old” city. The fact that the University of Athens was in the area sparked building activity that included the city’s famous educational institutions, houses for students arriving from the provinces and from the large centres of the Greek diaspora. The new district soon acquired a strong intellectual identity and became home to many great names of the Greek intelligentsia. The exhibition runs to May 25.

[ECPAD / Defense / Martin Baldwin-Edwards Archive]