One of her most photographed houses jokingat her feet Acropolis, in a green garden and next to the Ancient Agora – melancholy in its silence after the earthquake of 1999 – now an ordinary construction site. You are happy to hear the sounds of workshops and the clatter of work that goes on without interruption so that next year we have a jewelry building.

It is a neoclassical house at 13 Polignotu Street, erroneously referred to in popular literature as the House of Coletti, famous for its impressive central pediment and ceramic pupil in the niche. This masterpiece of neoclassical architecture (built in two phases) is fast becoming Acropolis Project Documentation Center “Charalambos Buras”. The house was quiet and closed after the 1999 earthquake. Some work to strengthen the house was started by YPPO in 2003-2006, but today we are talking about a coordinated renovation with a new study.

From the opposite window in the neoclassical building at 10 Polignotu Street, where Acropolis Works Maintenance Service (YSMA), you can see the gable of the house behind the scaffolding, as well as get information about the applied research. Architect Vasiliki Eleftheriou, director of YSMA, and her colleagues, as well as architect Kosmas Skaris, tell the story of the building, which has been owned by the Service since 2012.

The three-storey building of exceptional morphology and composition, listed as an architectural monument since 1960, will become a place of knowledge. It will house an archive of 300,000 items of restoration work on the Acropolis monuments since 1975, when work began. This is a titanic storehouse of knowledge, which, under new storage conditions, will provide researchers with the opportunity to study in specially equipped reading rooms and a library. This social contribution, which the Acropolis Projects Documentation Center will now carry out on the new roof, was, after all, the vision of the late Charalambos Buras, and it was a matter of course for YSMA to link the name of the 30-year-old President of the Acropolis. Committee for the Maintenance of Monuments (ESMA) with the Configuration Center.

The neoclassical building of Polygnotou will house 300,000 items of restoration of the monuments of the Holy Rock.

Study and sponsorship

A detailed study of the renovation of the building, along with associated structures, was approved in 2019. The task was carried out by the “Association of the Friends of the Acropolis”, sponsored by the P. and A. Kanellopoulou Foundation. The studies were prepared by Cosmas Skaris, Architectural Engineer, Vassilis Papavasileu, Civil Engineer, and PROTON Research Ltd. (study of electromechanical installations) led by members of ESMA and YSMA. The project was included in the public investment program in 2021 with a budget of 3,300,000 euros. The house itself is directly or indirectly a palimpsest of Athenian history. It was excluded from expropriation for the excavation of the Ancient Agora and was not demolished, but in 1960, when it was declared preserved, it was expropriated by the Greek state “for archaeological purposes”. Back in 1966, it housed the Second Ephorate of Antiquities for twenty years. The building was built in its original form (without a floor with a pediment) around 1870, where the Christ Church was located, which was demolished in 1851.

Known as the home of the civil engineer Antonis Manarakis, the Polygnotou house originally had a hipped roof. Probably around 1900 or shortly thereafter a storey was added to it, and it was then that the pediment was built and the clay statue added (probably for internal display and making a copy in its place). According to Mr. Skaris, the pediment resembles the pediment in Maraslai, but there is no evidence that it belongs to the architect of the school, Dimitris Kallias.

The house on Polignotou Street was filmed in Dinos Dimopoulos’ The Coach (1957) with Orestis Makris. Magnificent ceiling paintings of the second phase were discovered. In some projects, the influence of Art Nouveau is felt. They will be kept in perfect condition and will become the pearl of the new Center. The garden will also be restored, old trees will be emphasized (unfortunately, the old palm tree is lost), new plantings will be planted, all elements of the fence will be recreated, including decorative clay pots. The building on Polygnotou Street runs through the life of Athens as a cell of knowledge. It will be open to the community with activities and universal accessibility.