Imagine sitting inside an elegant 1920s corner apartment entirely reconstituted from the Belle Epoque and watching – through four large windows – the world of 2018 pass by in one of Athens most multicultural districts.
The building housing this incredible apartment is one of Athens’ most signature, with graceful, buttressed side-towers sloping gracefully out into the street. For decades while growing up in this city, I'd been passing by this gem and all the while it had been working its way into my consciousness.
Unlike many of the darkened neoclassical and eclectic diamonds littering the city’s formerly aristocratic neighbourhoods, this one's windows continue to emit light into the night as it's still inhabited.
After passing by so many times on walks through the city with friends, I knocked one day and the front door was opened by Souzanna, the granddaughter of its talented architect, Thanassis Demiris, and a student of Ernst Ζiller, the man responsible for some of Athens’ most famous buildings. Souzanna is a musician and mother, and runs the place alongside her brother, Thanassis.
The house is strewn with treasures, not least a first edition of an incredibly important and rare photographic archive of now-demolished neoclassical homes in Athens and the port of Pireaus, collated by the great Greek photographer Stelios Skopelitis. Some friends joined later in the evening: a Lebanese-Greek, an Algerian-Greek and a fully Greek friend, all of whom were familiar with the building from the outside. The low-key jazz music that Thanassis and Souzanna provide mingled with the sound of conversation in French, Greek, Arabic and English, and the clinking of glasses to the health of Mediterranean exchanges!
Book this treasure if you’re lucky enough to find a vacant date on its calendar!