1934, Pera, Istanbul. Akılas Millas, a baby in his mother’s arms, crosses the threshold of 115 Kumparatsi Street. The family lives in an apartment on the second floor, as he speaks spontaneously in French, Turkish and Greek. The tenement house is a micrograph of public life in the 1930s. Mr. Cohen lives in an apartment on the sixth floor, on the fifth floor lives the Georgiadis family, elderly people who rent a room to Mrs. Seimiri. On the fourth floor lives the Austro-German Rudolf Schindler with his probably Roman wife and tenant, teacher of foreign languages, who was a hunter of wild animals in Africa, on the third floor the flour miller Mr. from Imbro, and then Bertsui from Armenia.

Residents of the house at 115 Kumparatsi Street could become the heroes of a romance with Akila Millas as the main character, who, approaching the age of 90, retains the same energy, dynamism and love of life. His family descended from Andros and Nisyros. His grandparents were related to the old generation of his grandmother who came from Fanari and took root in Pera. He grew up in the Stavrodrome, where Kumparadzi meets the Great Road of Pera – now Istiklal, Independence Avenue since 1923 – and lived in this apartment for 30 years. He studied and excelled in medicine in Istanbul and at the same time was intensely involved in sports. From a young age he drew and collected collections (stamps, shells, insects, postcards).

Vasilevus’ rich and ubiquitous past prompted him to study politics and Asia Minor Catholicism, with parallel trips deep into Asia Minor. He is a prolific writer and has loyal friends and readers in Greece and Turkey, as his books, “only gypsy content,” as he emphasizes, are translated into Turkish, quickly sold out and republished. He often travels to the City to lecture, but mostly stays in Prince. “I am a prince,” he clarifies, “meaning resting in a prince.” His heart beats for the Princes’ Islands. “I would be there if not for this event,” he explains, and so we leave Propontis to go to the big exhibition that opens on May 2 at the Cultural Center of the Municipality of Athens “Melina” (former Poulopoulos Museum). pylon factory) under the auspices of the municipality of Athens. Its name “To Pera di chiros Akyla Milla” is based on the idea of ​​his friend, EKPA Emeritus Professor of Neurology Ioannis Evdokimidis. Coordinates himself under the leadership of Katerina Koskina.

The exhibition concerns the plans of Mr. Millas, which cover the Great Road of Pera, the Straight Road or the Grand Rue, as the Romans called it. This street, the backbone and showcase of European Constantinople – the Pera of the Europeans, the Peraia of the Roma, the Levantines, the Armenians and the Jews, the Beyoglu of the Turks – is depicted on 32 plans set aside for 20 years in the hope of becoming a book someday. First I drew with a pen, then with a tachograph. Every house, every apartment building that he painted is documented by photographs of that time, the beginning of the 20th century. Today, many of the buildings have been demolished and replaced with modern apartment buildings.

“I have no architectural knowledge, but I am a perfectionist. I was a surgeon, that is, a good master, at hand, as they say.

“These plans took shape on their own,” Mr. Millas says. “I have no architectural knowledge, but I am a perfectionist. I was a surgeon, that is, a good craftsman, had, as they say, a good hand. In 1973-74, I was in Khalki and saw that some of the mansions were being demolished. So I started drawing them for myself. When I arrived in Greece in 1980, I confess that it was difficult for me to adjust to Athens, so I threw myself into painting. Why did I leave the city? Because, as I said in an interview with the Millier newspaper, I got tired of counting the leaving Romans and preferred to come to Greece in order to count the arrivals.

“Akilas Millas paints what he saw, what he remembered and what old photographs testified to,” says Mr. Evdokimidis. “Essentially, he paints fading multiculturalism with grace and a touch of sadness as he tries to capture a world that is not only forever lost, but is beginning to fade in people’s minds. His drawings are always black and white. The lines are clean, the contours are clear, the details are intertwined into larger compositions. The result leaves an aesthetic imprint in memory, and this imprint may perhaps be a challenge for further research beyond nostalgia.”

Thus, the visitor to the exhibition will walk along the Grand rue de Pera, as it was around 1900. The right side of the long narrow hall of the Cultural Center will become the right wing of the Grand rue de Pera, from the Tunnel to the Galata Saray junction. The left side, the left side of the street, stretching towards Taksim Square, includes some important buildings – the Church of the Holy Trinity, the School of Painting, the Zappeion Women’s School. As for Kumparadzi Street, we will meet it on the right side. Mr. Millas drew a view of this uphill road as he saw it from his balcony.

“I spent my childhood in these windows,” he recalls. But “memories usually need to be introduced,” comments mathematician and art theorist Dr. Aris Mavrommatis. Through his contributions, modern digital 3D modeling technology was used to convert 2D design representations into 3D dynamic digital models and then, through 3D printing, to turn into objects “for the visitor to hold in their hands and develop their own personal fantasy storytelling.” based on his own experience.”

“They gave me my house in Prince,” Akilas Millas tells me, referring to the model he was given. What worries him is the interest of the Turks in all this. He has philhellene friends who love Catholicism, small children who want to know the history of their city. In the context of the Greco-Turkish approach, the picture book that follows the exhibition is written partly in Greek and partly in Turkish. “Perhaps it is this lonely and persistent Millas preoccupation with a recently lost past that drives the opposite shore of the Aegean – at least part of it – and that is why they have embraced his work so much,” says Mr. Evdokimidis. “Editions of his books in Turkish are becoming popular because they evoke memories unknown and in many ways “forbidden” for a long time. The bridge of memory will work, and the exhibition will go far beyond the waters of the Aegean Sea.” Exhibitions of his own work have already been presented in Prince, but a larger exhibition in Istanbul is officially planned for Peran in the near future.