City of Vultures: How Kipseli went from bohemia to survival

St. George’s Square

Kipseli – an area of ​​Athens that has long become a symbol of the lost urban grandeur. Formally, it is the “immigrant” quarter of the capital; informally, it is a space that the authorities strongly advise to avoid after dark.

At the same time, Kipseli remains the most densely populated region in Europe: almost 150,000 peopleaccording to the census, live in a dense concrete area between the Campus Martius, Patision Street, the Turkovunya hills and the Galati area.

How many of these people know in which city – once famous and beautiful – they live today?

Buy or rent An apartment in Kipseli is now easier than ever. Selling is much more difficult. There are few people willing to settle in an area with a “black” reputation. It’s even more difficult to love this city, choked with dust and concrete, with the mysterious and almost poetic name “City of Vultures.”

Kipseli is the most densely populated urban area in Europe. Among the thirty districts of Attica, it ranks 14th in petty thefts, but is a confident leader in car thefts. Population density reaches 80,000 inhabitants per square kilometer. In just two years, from 1998 to 2000, there were illegally 1,570 square meters of residential space were built.

From 147,500 inhabitants 68,950 of the district are men, the rest are women. The number of immigrants exceeds 40,000 people. The main communities are people from Africa, Albania and Poland.

50% Kipseli schoolchildren are children of immigrants, and in a number of schools their share exceeds 75%.

Kipseli ranks first in Europe not only in terms of population, but also in the absence of green areas: there are only 2.5 square meters of vegetation. Another figure rarely heard publicly: approx. 10,000 residents of the area are illiterate.

Kipseli, model 2025, is a relatively young district. Most residents are between 20 and 44 years old. Once upon a time, in the 1960s, young people also gathered here, but they discussed not the search for an employer, but philosophy, politics and the fate of the world.

Then Kipseli “boiled” not like an explosive multicultural cauldron, but like a hive of ideas, where everyone was both a master and a worker, part of a single urban organism.

The name “Kipseli” is more often associated with honeycombs, but historically it is more correct to talk about “Gipseli” – from the word “hypass”vulture Old-timers claim that in the 19th century, when the area was a continuous garden, the Turkovunya hills were densely populated with white vultures. The toponym “Gipseli” was recorded in the land contract of 1634.

In 1832, when Athens was not yet the capital, the English admiral Malcolm chose the site for his villa. For the sake of its construction, the first two-wheeled strollers were brought to Greece, which amazed the local residents.

The villa was designed by architects Cleanthes And Schaubert. The building was later taken over by Spyros Trikoupis and then became an asylum for the mentally ill.

Heroes of the Greek Revolution lived in Kypseli – admiral Konstantin Canaris and politician Dimitris Kallifronas. It was Kallifronas who insisted on celebrating March 25 as Greek Independence Day, against the wishes of the Bavarian court of King Otto.

He organized the holiday at his own peril and risk: the squares were decorated with flags, the city was awakened by 21 cannon salvos, and 17,000 Athenians – the entire Greek population of the capital – took to the streets.

The peak of Kipseli’s heyday occurred in the 1950s and 1960s. The area became the center of the Athenian elite, students, poetry, music and cinema. Street Fokionos Negri then was what Skufa in Kolonaki is today.

Poets, directors and actors met here, scripts were written, songs were born, and future films were discussed. The Kypsels have survived three waves of immigration – after the disaster of Asia Minor, the internal exodus of the 1950s and the modern “foreign expansion”.

The recession began in the 1980s, when housing prices suddenly collapsed and longtime residents began leaving in droves. Immigrants only took up the vacated space. Today, the most convinced patriots remain in the area.

It is possible that Kypseli were “discounted” deliberately – according to the same scheme as Psiri, Metaxourgio and Keramikos. The history of Athens has already seen degradation suddenly give way to gentrification.

The only question is who and when will decide to turn the “City of Vultures” into a second Kolonaki.

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