Kypseli, Athens

Kypseli
Κυψέλη
Neighborhood

Kypseli Square with Kanaris Statue in 2013
Kypseli
Coordinates: 38°00′09″N 23°44′29″E / 38.00250°N 23.74139°E / 38.00250; 23.74139Coordinates: 38°00′09″N 23°44′29″E / 38.00250°N 23.74139°E / 38.00250; 23.74139
Country Greece
Region Attica
City Athens
Website www.cityofathens.gr
The historic Fokionos Negri Street, now pedestrianised with numerous cafés and a park along its length, runs through the middle of the district.

Kypseli (Greek: Κυψέλη) is a neighbourhood in central Athens, Greece. It occupies much of the 6th municipal department of the City of Athens, and has a population of around 50,000.[1]

Boundaries

The boundaries of Kypseli are set by Patission Street at the west, by Tourkovounia hill at the east, by the Municipality of Galatsi at the north and by Pedion Areos park at the south. Extensions of Kypseli are Nea ('New') Kypseli which ends at Gyzi neighbourhood and Ano ('Upper') Kypseli which borders with Attiko Park, Papandreou neighbourhood and Galatsi.

History

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.

Kypseli was bounded differently from today in 1908 after a study by the county engineer Athanasios Georgiadis.[2]

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 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, Bauhaus and Art Deco.[3] Adjacent large green areas such as Pedion Areos 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.[3][4] 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.

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.[1] Several areas have remained commercial such as Patission and Fokionos Negri Streets.[1]

Trivia

The popular chillwave duo Keep Shelly In Athens is named after a pun on Kypseli.[5]

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[6]

References

  1. 1 2 3 (Greek) Ντίνα Βαΐου, Το αστικό τοπίο της πολυεθνικής Κυψέλης [Dina Vaiou, The urban landscape of multinational Kypseli].
  2. ↑ Great Greek Encyclopedia, Vol. XV, page 65, 1930.
  3. 1 2 (Greek) Μάχη Τράτσα, "Κυψέλη αρχιτεκτονικών αριστουργημάτων" [Machi Tratsa, "Kypseli of architectural masterpieces"], To Vima, 15 December 2013.
  4. ↑ (Greek) Βάσω Ρούσση, "Ένθεν και ένθεν της Πατησίων. Από τον εκλεκτικισμό στο μοντέρνο, στο χώρο εξάπλωσης της μεσοπολεμικής αστικής κατοικίας." [Vasso Roussi, "Both sides of Patision Street. From eclecticism to modernism, in an area of expansion of the interwar urban domicile."] monumenta.org. January 2015.
  5. ↑ Roebuck, Ian (16 March 2011). "Keep Shelly In Athens". Loud And Quiet. Music Is A Potion. 3 (26): 19. Retrieved 21 April 2012.
  6. ↑ "Greece Team Colors". rsssf.com. Retrieved 16 April 2015.
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