The main streets of Athens had buildings that, if preserved, would be landmarks today. Or at least it would be part of the city’s unique atmosphere.

And Athens was and is unique, because in this place, in this historical and geographical coordinate, generations of buildings were born that are special for the culture of the city, for its inhabitants.

An old photo from Panepistimi street draws our attention to one of these forgotten houses on the street, when there were still many uses, residential and commercial together, leisure and social life.

This house at 20 University belongs to those forgotten from the history of the city. Our gaze focuses on the façade of buildings from Homer to America towards Lycabettus, a completely post-war façade.

Even the building of the Archaeological Society by the architect Ioannis Antoniadis is a building from the 1950s, like everything in the series. They represent the trends of that decade, from 1950 to 1959, in the spectrum of classical modernism and functional architecture.

But the photo that worries us today shows a slender mansion that stood next to the old Archaeological Society. The entire facade of the four buildings, from Homer to America, was a composition of classicism and renaissance motifs with columns, metopes, pediments, friezes, marble and ceramic elements.

The gaze is immersed in the composition of these four buildings, which are no longer preserved even in the living memory of Athens.

And it’s an interesting, complex, and ever-changing topic. These are short-lived buildings, many of which survived 70, 60, 50 or even 40 years only to succumb to land use pressure in the post-1950 Athens gold fields.

Evidence of their Athenian presence speaks of an aesthetic adapted to the scale of life that developed in the city from 1870 to 1930, that is, during the period of urban maturation.

This long period of incubation of metropolitan characteristics would prepare the new city that would emerge spectacularly after 1928-30. and strengthened after 1960.

The romantic aspects of the lost buildings that led to the mass grave, in a century of aesthetic harmony, remind not only of the standards and technologies of the time, but also of the participation of society, owners, tenants, architects, experts, craftsmen in construction. urban life of the capital.

The spread of international standards and their adaptation to the scale, general taste and economy of Athens gave rise to the idea of ​​place, defined a social ethos, and through this hierarchies spread, Athenianism was defined.

The forgotten buildings of Athens existed on the site of the current buildings, which are also old. The palimpsest of memory leads us to the stratigraphy of the urban interior. These are excavations.