There is a zone of warm feelings in the foothills of Lycabettus towards Sina and Asclepius. On that sweet autumn morning, when the sky was a white blanket and with a clear Athenian light, the greenery of the pines around Agios Nikolaos Pefkakia exuded a fragrance that crowned the roofs and terraces, it was almost visible and tangible. The walls breathed from the rain, and in the courtyard of Agios Nikolaos one could calmly read that this temple was founded in 1889 by Prince Nikolaos and how soon after that, in 1895, it was inaugurated by the enlightened Metropolitan of Athens Herman (a year before his untimely death ). Architects Gerasimos and Anastasius Metaksas.

What would the area be like when it needed a magnificent temple? Naples was already densely populated, and if you stand on the steps of the church (where children’s games and the wishes of the newlyweds resonate in the mind), you will see on the right, at the corner of Dervenia and Asklipion, a neoclassical residential complex, an apartment building of the early 19th century, only two floors, but with many windows and separate entrances. The area breathes history.

Coming up from Asklipiou, I stopped to look at an interwar tenement building on the corner with Arachovis. This is an apartment building exuding Athenianism (with the same patina, melted down), smoked by decades of exhaust fumes, a sculpture of all pre-war block modernism. The architect Nikos Kavadas, who photographed all the buildings, claims that they are known as D. Karambela’s apartment buildings. Built in 1937 by civil engineer K. Triantafillidis. And further, on Arahovis 4, the eye stops at the beautiful entrance of the 50s. Stratigraphy of Athens…

But there, around Agios Nikolaos, nature coexists with the area’s history, visions of public education, a German presence, and the oldest presence of French archaeologists and non-Athenians. This mixture of applications, ambitions and buildings creates a sense of spiritual euphoria, urban osmosis. If you exit Agios Nikolaos at the Pikionis school in Pefkakia, you will pass the brutalist Rumeliote Center, but there you will have an unobstructed view of the German Church and the Bauhaus mansion, which reminds us of the German presence of the interwar period. As I passed by, the choral voices of the German church reached the heavens. You were invited to go down the Sinai and dive into the French Quarter. Rue Octavius ​​Merlier, French Institute with sculptures by Stenos Molfesis, LEA French bookstore, French School of Archaeology, in Didot, a complex of buildings from the 19th to 20th century within the famous gardens. These Athens seethed. The Art Nouveau apartment buildings, overlapping in layers from the 1930s to the 1980s, immerse the feel of the city in the heart of the 20th century. And further, in Marseille, neoclassical tenements, around the Greek-American Union and from there on the most populous street of Skouf, a stronghold of interwar and post-war urbanism.

Yes, those Athens were easy. He radiated the true fumes of urban memory.