A shop below, a family home above: the building at Athinaidos 10, at the edge of Agia Irini Square, is one of the houses of the old Athenian market district that the Greek state protected by decree in 1985. Restored in 2019–2020, it now houses the Athens 1890 hotel.
At a glance
The blocks between Athinas, Mitropoleos and Kolokotroni streets are what Greek planning law calls the Old Commercial Centre of Athens, and the lanes around the church of Agia Irini are known for their fabric shops. The building at Athinaidos 10 belongs to that world. It was built as a mixed-use house, with a shop on the ground floor and mezzanine and the owner’s family living on the two floors above. Its facade, according to the architects who restored it, belongs to the last phase of Athenian neoclassicism, still classical in its grammar but already richer and more complex in its ornament. It is a listed building (diatiriteo) under the 1985 presidential decree that protected the historic buildings of the Old Commercial Centre of Athens.
Key facts
- Where: Athinaidos 10, on Agia Irini Square, Old Commercial Centre, Athens (the restoration architects give the address as Agia Irini Square 10)
- Protection: listed (charaktirismeno diatiriteo) by the Presidential Decree of 30 May 1985, Government Gazette ΦΕΚ 349/Δ/19-7-1985, corrected in ΦΕΚ 440/Δ/1985; entry in the Ministry of Environment’s register of listed buildings
- Date: end of the nineteenth century, completed in the first decades of the twentieth, according to the restoration architects; the hotel’s name gives 1890, and we have not found a document that fixes the year
- Original use: shop on the ground floor and mezzanine, family residence on the first and second floors; the shop later housed the Symeonidis fabric store
- Restoration: 2019–2020, Micro Team Architects (Giorgos Kondylis, Diana Giannopoulou); six levels, 1,100 m² in total
- Current use: Athens 1890 hotel, with a restaurant on the ground floor and mezzanine
- Coordinates: 37.976961, 23.728695 · open in Google Maps
History
The house stands a few steps from the church of Agia Irini, which served as the metropolitan church of the new Greek state in the early years of independence, in a district of shops and drapers. The architects’ description of the restoration, published on the Greek architecture portal ktirio.gr, says the house was the property and home of Themistoklis Michalopoulos and his family, a man of letters remembered for innovations in Greek schooling, among them a New Greek Primer (Neon Ellinikon Alfavitarion) of 1892. Press reports of 2025, based on the hotel’s own presentation, name the builder as a silk merchant, Ioannis Michalopoulos. The two accounts agree on the family name and on the house’s double role as shop and home; we have not found a primary document that settles who built it.
At one time the ground floor and mezzanine held the fabric shop of Symeonidis; its old cutting table survives and was reused in the restaurant. On 30 May 1985 a presidential decree declared as listed the historic buildings of the Old Commercial Centre of Athens, the area enclosed by Athinas, Mitropoleos, Voulis, Kolokotroni, Karytsi, Parnassou and Evripidou streets, and set special building and land-use rules for the district. Athinaidos 10 is among the buildings protected by that decree; the Ministry of Environment’s register records it as listed under the decree and its correction of the same year.
Between 2019 and 2020 the building was restored and converted by Micro Team Architects. During the excavation of the basement, archaeological finds and old wells came to light and were kept visible in the new rooms. The investigation of the facade found that it had originally been painted over its whole surface to imitate marble, and that finish was brought back. The house opened as a hotel under the Aria Hotels group in 2025.
What you see
We have not found a free photograph of the facade that we could publish here, so this description follows the architects’ published account and the photographs released by the hotel. The front is organised in three horizontal zones, base, body and crown, with pilasters, bands and an entablature carried on brackets. Two vertical axes are marked by marble balconies on marble consoles, with ornate cast-iron railings in which two sphinxes face each other across a central lyre. On the top floor the pilasters are fluted, with volute capitals, and the cornice is lined with a row of small palmette ornaments along the roofline.
Two details are particular to this house. Under the balcony of the second floor sits a crowned female head modelled on the Varvakeion Athena, the small Roman-era marble copy of Pheidias’s Athena Parthenos now in the National Archaeological Museum. Along the frieze, four relief portraits, two men and two women, imitate ancient Greek models; the architects suggest they may be idealised images of the family who built and lived in the house. At street level the shop front is framed by two-storey cast-iron columns under a decorative metal canopy of the belle époque kind. Inside, the painted ceilings of the mezzanine and the neoclassical patterned floor of the ground floor were conserved.
Practical information
- The building is a hotel with a restaurant on the ground floor; the facade can be seen from Athinaidos Street and Agia Irini Square at any time.
- The street is narrow: the balconies and the frieze are best seen from the far pavement, looking up.
- The surrounding blocks are part of the same protected Old Commercial Centre, and many of the neighbouring houses are listed too.
Getting there
Athinaidos is a short street parallel to Ermou, one block to the north. The house stands just west of its crossing with Kalamiotou, where the street opens towards Agia Irini Square. Monastiraki metro station (lines 1 and 3) is a few minutes’ walk to the west and Syntagma (lines 2 and 3) about ten minutes to the east. Line 3 runs directly from Athens International Airport to both stations.
Nearby
- The church of Agia Irini on Aiolou Street, which served as the metropolitan church of Athens in the first years of the Greek state, on the square in front of the house.
- Panagia Kapnikarea, an eleventh-century Byzantine church standing in the middle of Ermou Street, about 110 metres to the south.
- The Metropolitan Cathedral of Athens, about 230 metres to the south-east.
Sources
- Ministry of Environment and Energy, Estia register of listed buildings, entry «ΑΘΗΝΑΙΔΟΣ 10»: status Charaktirismeno (listed), Presidential Decree of 30-5-1985, ΦΕΚ 349/Δ/19-7-1985, and correction ΦΕΚ 440/Δ/19-9-1985.
- Ministry of Culture, Permanent List of Declared Monuments (archived copy): text of the 1985 decree on the listed buildings of the Old Commercial Centre of Athens, with the boundary streets of the protected area.
- ktirio.gr, project description of the restoration by Micro Team Architects: dating, original uses, the Michalopoulos family, the facade (sphinx railings, Varvakeion Athena, four relief portraits, faux-marble finish, cast-iron columns), basement finds, credits and dates.
- iefimerida.gr, 21 June 2025 and banks.com.gr, 11 June 2025: the building as a listed nineteenth-century house built by the silk merchant Ioannis Michalopoulos, with a shop on the ground floor; the opening of the hotel.
- Athens 1890, the hotel’s website: address and published photographs of the facade.
- OpenStreetMap / Nominatim: position of the building footprint, returned as 10, Αθηναΐδος, Athens.
- The builder’s identity rests on two secondary accounts that name different members of the Michalopoulos family; the year 1890 is the hotel’s own and is not confirmed by the sources above.
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