I am cultivating a relationship with the insignificant and simultaneously famous Petraki street. Many will ask where it is despite its location in the heart of Athens between Ermou and Mitropoleos streets. It leads into Voulis and Fokionos streets and is an irregular road veering clear of any notions of city planning, harking more to a medieval understanding of the concept. This zigzag layout makes it hard to ignore.
When I walked it, thoroughly, a few days ago, I saw it as vibrant and lively, not just because it is a quiet and safe alley but because, despite its short length, it bustles with activity.
On the one end, it now has a new H&M store and on the other the Heteroclito wine bar with its lovely fonts. In between, it is full; with a fine bric-a-brac store and a bakery which, due to its name, Pericles Speaks on the Pnyx, is adorned with a reproduction of the famous 19th century painting by Philipp von Foltz of the ancient Athenian statesman Pericles delivering a speech on Pnyx hill.
There’s also a supermarket and a minimalist-designed hotel with modern apartments. It also retains typical Athenian sights like the shop with lamps and lampshades or the one with the sewing machines inside an arcade. Many of the street’s arcades, found in buildings constructed after 1960, open on to Ermou street.
The Athinaikon restaurant on Mitropoleos street occupies a space on Petraki with tables. The people sitting there alongside the cafes and a very pretty wine bar towards Voulis street created an urban atmosphere which I found particularly pleasant. But what charmed me the most about Petraki street is how naturally it represents the Athenian middle of the road. Objectively-speaking it sits on a thin line between picturesque and rough, but upon observing the buildings, the conditions for a new melting pot are obvious.
“ The people sitting there alongside the cafes and a very pretty wine bar towards Voulis street created an urban atmosphere which I found particularly pleasant.”
A few days ago I saw a photo taken by Ilias Tsaousakis, a man with a poetic vision of the city. Its subject matter was a post-war building on Petraki street which protrudes from the first floor, upwards like a gigantic concrete anthropomorphic figure head. I knew the building; rough and cubist. But the warmth of that photo made me think of the different versions of urban poetry.
When I went to Petraki it was on a weekday morning with traffic so, objectively speaking, the conditions were not ripe to be a detached observer. Nonetheless, the harmony between the buildings on Petraki street, all from 20th century (roughly between 1920 to 1990) created a blend of urban imagination and poetry due to their many contradictory and cryptic interpretations. I saw many buildings of the 20s and 30s, some of particular aesthetic beauty and elegance; others more simple but still distinct. I saw the post-war buildings in a more sympathetic light and I think we should invest in the effort to understand some of them better. Petraki revealed Athens to me in a condensed form, a summary of Athenian life in a microcosm which unfolds upon observation.
Originally published in Kathimerini newspaper
“ I saw many buildings of the 20s and 30s, some of particular aesthetic beauty and elegance; others were more common but always of a level and above.”
