Few pieces of valuable real estate can tell stories like those at 65 Sokratous Street, near Omonia. This is the old Court of Appeal, abandoned since 2000, dilapidated and dilapidated, now destined for a new life, as EFKA, which owns it, has announced a tender for a long-term lease. The new investment will be for the hotel, for which the building was originally built in the late 1950s.

But this is not an easy case. The cycles of time on Socrates Street condense the history of the city itself, its rise, fall and rebirth, as romantic stories can be traced in the same plot from the time of Otho to the ambitious tourist reconstruction of the 1960s. This Athenian palimpsest takes us to 1840, when, on the site of the old Court of Appeal, Stamatis Kleanthis designed a romantic mansion for the residence of the Corfu count Spyridon Theotokis and his tempestuous wife, known in all aristocratic circles in Europe, Jane Digby (1808-1881). ). Jane Digby (in those years the Countess of the Mother of God) was the great mistress of Europe. And this woman, whose portrait is in Munich in the Gallery of Fine Arts (Stiller) commissioned by the lover of Louis I, father of Otho, also lived on Socrates Street. In Omonia.

The legend of Jane Digby excited and outraged the Athenians. She was an Amazon and had lovers. Her beauty was known. She later gave the mansion to her old lover, General Hadjipetros, who sold it to Ambassador Pericles Argyropoulos. Old Athenians remembered the house as a clinic until it was demolished in 1956. Former Countess Bogoroditsa from Socrates Street found herself in a sheikh’s tent in the Middle East. He was another lover of hers.

During those building boom years, the luxurious Ambassadeurs Hotel was built on the same site. It was the work of the architect Spyros Staikos (1913-2012) in the classical modernist style. Spyros Staikos, father of Konstantinos Staikos, was in demand in the 1950s and 1960s and was one of the architects of the Hilton. The Ambassadeurs Hotel enjoyed a very good reputation (especially in the 1960s) but followed the decline of Omonia and finally closed in 1980. Until 2000, the building became the Court of Appeal. During the difficult years of the crisis, it housed immigrants. Then it was abandoned and now, during the years of the revival of a new type, the same building is again intended for a hotel. Life cycles and layers of history from Otho to the 21st century.

From the 1950s, when it was easy to demolish the magnificent building of Cleanthes in the heart of Athens, until the destruction of Omonia at the beginning of the 21st century, many episodes of Athenian life intervened. The building that exists today, imposing and luxurious for its time, reflects the optimism and elegance of that post-war renaissance. This legacy of 1955-1960 modernism should be respected and combined with the spirit of the 2020s.