Begun in 1925 on a street that the great fire of 1917 had emptied, the building at Ermou 32 grew by two floors in 1937 and was listed by the Greek state in 1983. It has since been offices, a tutoring school and flats, and is now The Modernist hotel.
At a glance
In August 1917 a fire destroyed two thirds of Thessaloniki, and the burned centre was rebuilt on a new plan drawn by the French architect Ernest Hébrard. The years that followed filled the new blocks with apartment and office buildings, and Ermou 32 is one of them: the Thessaloniki magazine Parallaxi, drawing on the building permit, describes it as representative of the mass rebuilding of the 1920s and 1930s. Construction started in 1925. On 14 December 1937 two more storeys were added, the fifth floor and a top attic floor. In 1983 the building was included in the presidential decree that listed the historic buildings of the Lower Town of Thessaloniki.
Key facts
- Where: Ermou 32, Thessaloniki, in the commercial centre between Aristotelous Square and the Modiano market
- Protection: listed (charaktirismeno diatiriteo) by the Presidential Decree of 2 November 1983 on the listed buildings of the Lower Town of Thessaloniki, Government Gazette ΦΕΚ 734/Δ/28-11-1983; entry in the Ministry of Environment’s register of listed buildings
- Built: begun 1925; fifth floor and attic floor added on 14 December 1937
- Building permit: no. 1238, as reported by Parallaxi, which names an architect-engineer of the Aronis family among the owners
- Later uses: offices, for several years a tutoring school (frontistirio), and flats
- Current use: The Modernist hotel, 40 rooms, converted in 2017–2018 with interiors by the Thessaloniki studio FORMrelated
- Coordinates: 40.634412, 22.943356 · open in Google Maps
History
The fire of 1917 burned for 32 hours and left more than 70,000 people homeless. Instead of rebuilding the old streets as they had been, the Greek government commissioned Ernest Hébrard to redesign the burned area, and the grid of the modern centre, with Aristotelous Square at its heart, is his. Private building on the new plots went ahead through the 1920s. The Modiano market, a short walk from Ermou 32, was built between 1922 and 1925 on the same ground.
According to Parallaxi, which summarised the building’s permit in its series on the buildings of the city, construction of Ermou 32 began in 1925. The permit, no. 1238, was approved on 20 May of an unstated year and records the plot as building 8/2. The article’s transcription of the names is compressed; as we read it, it names an owner and an architect-engineer of the Aronis family who was also a co-owner. On 14 December 1937 two storeys were added on top: the fifth floor and an attic floor (yperoo). The building housed offices, then for many years a tutoring school, and flats; a 2018 report in the Thessaloniki daily Voria describes it as a listed building of independent residences.
The listing is older than the hotel. A presidential decree of 2 November 1983, published in the Government Gazette on 28 November 1983, declared as listed a series of buildings in the Lower Town of Thessaloniki and set special building rules for them; the Ministry of Environment’s register records Ermou 32 under that decree. In 2017–2018 the building was converted into a 40-room hotel. The work kept the high ceilings, the plaster details, the original encaustic tiles of the ground floor and the pale parquet of the rooms, and added a roof garden at the top.
What you see
We have not found a free photograph of the building that we could publish here, so this description follows the photographs released by the hotel and published in the press. The street front is rendered in a warm sand colour and divided into three vertical bays. The central bay carries a round-arched entrance with an iron grille door and a fan-shaped fanlight, under a small triangular pediment, and above it a column of windows set in plain white frames. The two side bays have a balcony on each floor, with balustraded fronts in the same pale stone colour.
The top of the facade ends in a white parapet pierced by small openings, behind which the roof garden’s plants show from the street. The hotel’s glazed entrance opens to the left of the arched doorway, which still carries the number 32. Next door, the neighbouring building has arched windows under a patterned band in the Moorish taste.
Practical information
- The building is a working hotel; the facade can be seen from Ermou Street at any time.
- Ermou is a busy commercial street: the upper floors and the parapet are best seen from the opposite pavement.
- Several of the neighbouring buildings on Ermou were listed in the same 1983 decree.
Getting there
Ermou runs parallel to Egnatia and Tsimiski through the commercial centre of Thessaloniki. Number 32 is about two minutes’ walk east of Aristotelous Avenue and close to the Modiano market. Venizelou station on the Thessaloniki metro is a short walk to the north, on Egnatia Street, and the city’s bus lines cross the area on Egnatia and Tsimiski. Thessaloniki Makedonia airport is about 15 kilometres to the south-east.
Nearby
- The Modiano market, the covered market built in 1922–1925 and restored in 2022, about 90 metres away.
- Bey Hamam, the Ottoman bath house, about 220 metres to the north-east.
- The Church of Panagia Chalkeon, about 280 metres to the north.
- The Church of the Acheiropoietos, about 370 metres to the north-east.
Sources
- Ministry of Environment and Energy, Estia register of listed buildings, entry «ΕΡΜΟΥ 32», Lower Town of Thessaloniki: status Charaktirismeno (listed), Presidential Decree of 2-11-1983, ΦΕΚ 734/Δ/28-11-1983.
- Giorgos Tsitiridis, «Discover the buildings of the city: Modernist, Ermou 32», Parallaxi, 22 May 2022: start of construction 1925, the 1937 addition, the permit, later uses, conversion to a hotel.
- Voria, 31 May 2018: the hotel in a listed 1920s building of independent residences on Ermou.
- designboom, 24 August 2020: conversion by FORMrelated, 40 rooms, original encaustic tiles and parquet, roof garden.
- The Modernist, the hotel’s website: address and published photographs of the facade.
- Wikipedia, Great Thessaloniki Fire of 1917 and Modiano Market: the fire, Hébrard’s plan and the dates of the market.
- OpenStreetMap / Nominatim: position, returned as The Modernist Thessaloniki, 32, Ερμού, Φραγκομαχαλάς, Thessaloniki.
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