Asyrmatos ( ) or Attaliotika ( ) is a

neighborhood A neighbourhood (Commonwealth English) or neighborhood (American English) is a geographically localized community within a larger town, city, suburb or rural area, sometimes consisting of a single street and the buildings lining it. Neigh ...

of the center of

Athens Athens ( ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Greece, largest city of Greece. A significant coastal urban area in the Mediterranean, Athens is also the capital of the Attica (region), Attica region and is the southe ...

Greece Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. Located on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to th ...

. It is located in the west slopes of Philopappos Hill, next to Ano Petralona district. It is technically part of

Petralona Petralona (, ) is a neighborhood of the center of Athens, Greece. Athenians further subdivide the area into Ano (upper) Petralona or Kato (Lower) Petralona, where Ano Petralona is the area between the Philopappos Hill and the railway and Kato Pe ...

. Asyrmatos was named after a transmitting antenna of

Greek Navy The Hellenic Navy (HN; , abbreviated ΠΝ) is the naval force of Greece, part of the Hellenic Armed Forces. The modern Greek navy historically hails from the naval forces of various Aegean Islands, which fought in the Greek War of Independence ...

(''asyrmatos'' being the Greek word for 'wireless'). This area was an old quarry where refugees from

Asia Minor Anatolia (), also known as Asia Minor, is a peninsula in West Asia that makes up the majority of the land area of Turkey. It is the westernmost protrusion of Asia and is geographically bounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the south, the Aegean ...

were settled, after the

Asia Minor Disaster Asia ( , ) is the largest continent in the world by both land area and population. It covers an area of more than 44 million square kilometres, about 30% of Earth's total land area and 8% of Earth's total surface area. The continent, which ...

. Most of the refugees came from

Attaleia Antalya is the fifth-most populous city in Turkey and the capital of Antalya Province. Recognized as the "capital of tourism" in Turkey and a pivotal part of the Turkish Riviera, Antalya sits on Anatolia's southwest coast, flanked by the Tauru ...

, so the other name for this district is Attaliotika. The new settlement was built with rough and makeshift materials, giving it a characteristic slum-like appearance. During the

Dekemvriana The ''Dekemvriana'' (, "December events") refers to a series of clashes fought during World War II in Athens from 3 December 1944 to 11 January 1945. The conflict was the culmination of months of tension between the left-wing National Liberatio ...

in 1944, the navy school and transmitting antenna were burnt down, leading the government to decide to accommodate the refugees in the old navy school facilities, with the building of stone houses and a block of flats. Asyrmatos was used as natural scenery for the notable Greek neorealistic film '' Synoikia To Oneiro''. The film was censored by the Greek authorities of the 1960s for depicting images of poverty and misery within Athens.

References

Neighbourhoods in Athens {{Athens-geo-stub