Alexandrou Svolou Street

What I can see

Alexandrou Svolou Street stands out for its exquisitely beautiful interwar apartment buildings, some historic shops, some café-bars and the impressive elm trees that almost died due to the Galeruchella beetle. Some of its wonderful buildings are a) at number 7, with clean volumes and lines, plasticity in the facade, ercker, successful composition of vertical and horizontal axes, b) the Galfa apartment building (1935) at number 9, by Georgios Manoussos, a modern building with Art Deco influences, also with clean volumes and lines and a combination of a central ercker with side balconies c) at number 11, with an eclectic entrance door, a central ercker with balconies on each side, d) at number 13, a very original building for its time, with geometric cubist art deco references, e) at number 15 (probably built between 1930-1935), with linear decorative elements that highlight the vertical axis and ratio, a central ercker and curved and horizontal balconies on either side f) the Papadimas-Papamanolis apartment building (1937), by Georgios Manoussos at number 19, with erckers and continuous balconies and a central recess, which has semicircular balconies, thus creating an aesthetically original plasticity game with its volumes, g) at number 39, a modern building with art deco influences, symmetrical, simple, it has an ercker and is morphologically and structurally similar to the adjacent one (number 41), thus creating a continuous front. Also worth mentioning are the buildings (of the same era and logic) at numbers 44 (by Maximilian Rubens, with the characteristic angular circular ercker), 33, 22 (Katsikas Mansion by Boris Karagiannis, 1958, where the Esperos cinema operated) and 16.

What I can't see

Many of the Alexandrou Svolou Street residents are artists, writers and journalists. The previous names of the street were “Kissavou” (a mountain southeast of Olympus), “Polonias” (in honour of the Polish philhellenes who fought in the Greek-Turkish war of 1897) and “Prigkipos (Prince) Nikolaou” (brother of King Constantine). The street was named after the resistance fighter, constitutionalist and politician Alexandros Svolos after the end of dictatorship and re-establishment of democracy.

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