In a dense Athenian area such as Upper Ilisia, you go unsuspecting. But you know that you can still, with a little luck and perseverance, face the unexpected sorrows of an old life, half-transparent and half-forgotten. Above Olof Palme towards the university campus, near the center of Zografou, the narrow streets and lanes of Ano Ilisia tell stories about the population of this city.

I thought how much it will stand out when this beautiful house is built, which still lives in a small garden, very close to the main road of Ano Ilisia. I was surprised to see him with his beautiful gates and closed world, as if he wanted to maintain his autonomy in an environment full of asphalt, cars and apartment buildings built since 1965-70. It appeared to me like a ghost, and it really was a gap of air, light and simple life close to the earth. forgotten way. I saw that the house was inhabited and walked past so as not to interfere. But I wanted to photograph the beautiful front door, which at that moment opened to me as a gift.

It is only natural that such an area, located so close to the center of Athens that if you want to walk, you will reach the Hilton hotel in a few minutes, will have a now forgotten history buried under large apartment buildings. From stories, photographs, and what little remains, it is clear that the scattered houses of the interwar period were located among barren plots of land, on hills and largely undeveloped dirt roads. There were a number of social Small villas, even without much amenities, a few more compact houses from 1935-40, with a simple superstructure but beautiful front doors, and a few forgotten houses of refugees or slums.

I was surprised to see two or three of them, the size of a matchbox and forgotten between the apartments of neighboring apartment buildings or on small plots of land in dead ends and small alleys. This contemporary drawing showed me the many layers of life in an area that was very sparsely populated until 1950, between Kaysariani and Zografou, away from the dense urban life of Athens.

I also stayed at another house, on the corner of 13 Arvila and Markandas streets, which I found closed with a construction company sign hanging. Apparently I caught it before its impending demolition. Two-story, with a stern, austere aesthetic lexicon of district modernism, this house opened to me a wonderful front door in an authentic military style, wooden, painted in blue-gray. It was placed in an artificial brown narthex, an image as Athenian as the lush orange trees that, like columns, filled the surroundings with a dizzying aroma. I remember this image mainly because this house was clearly destined for demolition. As well as the front door with the garden of a small house.

Scattered houses, which can still be seen in Ano Ilisia, now have a collectible character. There are so few of them, and probably the best ones have long since become apartment buildings. I marked the corner house on the ground floor, Agios Gerasimos and Abydos, for the sake of history (also in the shade of pale orange trees), and the shack further up in Abydos, with a tin roof and green shutters. Small as if from the page of a fairy tale about gnomes.