The gentle ruins of Sirinon Street in Paleo Faliro were only a reminder of the atmosphere that reigned throughout this area decades ago. You will hardly find old houses in Faliro that, until the 70s, retained the form of a stately suburb with villas, small and large, from the beach to the high. Those houses in front of me on Sirinon Street, closed and abandoned, reminded me only of the former scope of the streets, gardens, tall trees, romantic porches.

The once tall palm tree has long since died in the small garden in front of the modest houses on Sirinon Street. I observed their harmonious symmetry. These are twin houses, Siamese, with a single partition, they are released on the left and right on independent sleeves. From above they form the letter U, their tiled roof, a garden full of weeds, trees and bushes, chairs, cats, railings, remnants of life. What caught my attention was the contrast with the surrounding area. Faliro has had very tall apartment buildings for decades. These houses were very low, unobtrusive, they were companions, quiet and withdrawn. They had courtyards and gardens, stairs leading to the front door, windows to the left and right with views of trees and birds. It’s like seeing canvas chairs in the summer in the yard, where uncontrolled wild vegetation is now raging along with broken chairs. There, on the steps, some brisk feet climbed. Opposite there would be other houses, the light would reach the rooms inside.

And even lower, on Sirinon Street, 29, not far from Agios Alexandros, there is another noble corpse. Once an elegant old mansion, built at the beginning of the 20th century, with a neoclassical smoky atmosphere. Small house from Faleri. I saw it sandwiched between tenements, its façade covered in wild vegetation, orange crowns and silvery green olive trees. This house, unlike the others, the twins below, was crowned with a turret. That room overlooking the tower would be fabulous, atmospheric, a different world. Observatory… Country architecture with a very simple layout, with plinths and stones in masonry, plastered in the color of ocher, aged from rains, merciless sun, touches and winds. Her skin is torn and shows us her age, she also shows us the contents of the house.

Aerial photographs of Faliro before 1960 show paradise. Tower houses and mansions-hotels were demolished and turned into apartments. Life is changing. But these encounters with the minimal ruins of Faliros, next to other minimally preserved mansions that shine today, bring the gaze back to a forgotten scale. The atmosphere, greenery, and urban heritage have been preserved in Old Faliro. However, how beneficial is the presence of old houses that carry these threads of Faleri’s history, which remind us that life is not one-dimensional, that time has cycles, that beauty has many interpretations, that we are all creatures with memory and with the need for rebaptism.

I said goodbye to the little houses on Sirinon Street, with little hope that they would survive. They gave me food for thought.