Kypseli (, ) is a neighbourhood in central

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 occupies much of the 6th municipal department of the municipality of Athens, and has a population of around 65,000. Ντίνα Βαΐου
''Το αστικό τοπίο της πολυεθνικής Κυψέλης''
ina Vaiou, ''The urban landscape of multinational Kypseli''

Boundaries

The boundaries of Kypseli are set by Patission Street at the west, by

Tourkovounia The Tourkovounia (), also known as Lykovounia (Λυκοβούνια, "wolf mountains") and in Antiquity called Anchesmos (), is a hill range in Athens, Attica. The name has also been transferred to a neighbourhood in Central Athens and a neighbo ...

hill at the east, by the Municipality of

Galatsi Galatsi (, ''Galátsi'' ), called in Katharevousa Galatsion (, ''Galátsion''), is a town, a northern suburb of Athens agglomeration, Greece, and a municipality of the Attica (region), Attica region. The municipality has an area of 4.026 km ...

at the north and by

Pedion Areos The Pedion tou Areos or Pedion Areos (, , meaning ''Field of Ares'', corresponding to the French ''Champ de Mars'' and the ancient ''Campus Martius'') is one of the largest public parks in Athens, Greece. It is also the name of the wider neighbor ...

park at the south. Extensions of Kypseli are Nea ('New') Kypseli which ends at Gkyzi neighbourhood and Ano ('Upper') Kypseli which borders with Attiko Park, Papandreou neighbourhood and Galatsi.

Districts

# Ano Kypseli (Agias Zonis, Alepotrypa, Agios Athanasios, Kyprion) # Kypseli (Fokionos Negri, Plateia Kanari, Agios Georgios, Polygono) # Nea Kypseli (Nea Kypseli I./Dikastiria, Nea Kypseli II./Timios Stavros)

History and architecture

Until 1908, when the county engineer Athanasios Georgiadis first bounded and planned Kypseli, Kypseli was a rural area with estates and country houses. In such a house Konstantinos Kanaris, fighter of the Greek revolution and later prime minister of Greece, lived and died. Also, in 1831, the British admiral Pulteney Malcolm had architects Eduard Schaubert and Stamatios Kleanthis build him a house which now lies on Agias Zonis Street and houses the Hospice for the Disabled of Athens. A clearly urban development of Kypseli began in the 1930s with the construction of family houses and the first modern apartment buildings in Athens. The development of apartment buildings was contemporary with

Kolonaki Kolonaki (, ), literally "Little Column", is an upscale neighborhood in central Athens, Greece. It is located on the southern slopes of Mount Lycabettus. Its name derives from the two metre column (located in Kolonaki Square) that defined the area ...

and other central neighbourhoods. Although many of the earlier houses were built in a neoclassical or eclectic style, from the 1930s onwards, the designs of newer houses and apartment buildings were influenced by international trends such as

modernism Modernism was an early 20th-century movement in literature, visual arts, and music that emphasized experimentation, abstraction, and Subjectivity and objectivity (philosophy), subjective experience. Philosophy, politics, architecture, and soc ...

Bauhaus The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the , was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined Decorative arts, crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., ...

and

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French (), is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design that first Art Deco in Paris, appeared in Paris in the 1910s just before World War I and flourished in the United States and Europe during the 1920 ...

. Μάχη Τράτσα
"Κυψέλη αρχιτεκτονικών αριστουργημάτων"
achi Tratsa, "Kypseli of architectural masterpieces" ''

To Vima ''To Vima'' () is a Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed la ...

'', 15 December 2013. Adjacent large green areas such as

and Fokionos Negri Street pushed Kypseli to become an upmarket district with many apartment buildings built until the 1960s that addressed to the middle and upper-middle class. In 1937 the municipal market of Kypseli on Fokionos Negri Street, designed by architect Alexandros Metaxas, was inaugurated by the dictator

Ioannis Metaxas Ioannis Metaxas (; 12 April 187129 January 1941) was a Greek military officer and politician who was dictator of Greece from 1936 until his death in 1941. He governed constitutionally for the first four months of his tenure, and thereafter as th ...

. Moreover, the shops on the street level made Kypseli a shopping area. Shopping districts were Kypselis Square, Patission Street, Kypselis Street, Fokionos Negri Street and Amerikis Square. During the 1960s Kypseli also had a vibrant nightlife with many theatres and cinemas, restaurants and cafés, bars and clubs. Beginning in the 1980s many residents of Kypseli moved to the northern suburbs of Athens and, later, immigrants started using the basements and the small apartments of the buildings as cheap residences. Consequently, the value of real estate decreased even if high apartments on Fokionos Negri Street can be sold more expensively in comparison to the rest of the district. Several areas have remained commercial such as Patission and Fokionos Negri Streets and Kypseli is still known for its many theatres. Gentrification and multiculturalism has seen Kypseli become a popular neighbourhood again in more recent years.

Transportation

Kypseli is served by plenty of bus lines. In the next decade Athens Metro line 4 will have some of its stations in Kypseli.

Trivia

The Greek band Keep Shelly in Athens is named after a pun on Kypseli.

Sports

Kypseli is the seat of Panellinios G.S., which was founded in 1891. Other sport clubs based in Kypseli include Athinaida F.C., a football club founded in 1938

Gallery

File:Kanaris-kypseli.jpg, Statue of Konstantinos Kanaris, Kypselis Square. File:Metaxas house in Athens.jpg, Apartment building and house of

(1928). File:Lanara condominium.jpg, Apartment building built by Ioannis Zolotas for the Lanaras family (1938). File:House on Spetson Street, Kypseli, Athens.jpg, House on Spetson Street built for Panagiotis J. Carras (1939). File:Spiteris House by Aristomenis Provelengios, Kypseli, Athens.jpg, Tonis and Ioanna Spiteris's home and atelier on Kykladon Street. It was designed in 1955 by Aristomenis Provelengios. File:Condominium in Kypeseli.jpg, One of the many apartment buildings that can be found in Kypseli, built in the 1950s and early 1960s. These buildings tend to be made up of large apartment units and very rarely surpass six storeys in height. File:Phokionos Negri street in Kypseli.jpg, The historic Fokionos Negri Street, now pedestrianised with numerous cafés and a park along its length, runs through the middle of the district.

References

External links

{{Authority control Neighbourhoods in Athens