Council to consider purchase of Palamas House
The expropriation or direct purchase of Palamas House in the historic Plaka district of Athens by the Culture Ministry will be considered on Thursday by the Central Council for Modern Monuments.
The building at 5 Periandrou Street in which Kostis Palamas, one of the most prominent Greek poets of the 19th and 20th centuries, resided in the final years of his life, was declared a historic monument in 1999.
The property was also the place from where, in February 1943, a procession began of thousands of people who accompanied his body to the First Cemetery of Athens. This led to a spontaneous act of resistance to the Nazi occupation of Greece as the people began to chant the national anthem as they marched to the cemetery.
Culture Minister Lina Mendoni bemoaned the decrepit state of the building. “This property is today in a tragic state of preservation, which offends not only the memory of our great poet, but also the Greek people,” she said.
The aim of the ministry is for the house to be “restored and transformed by the services of the Ministry of Culture into a place for the study of modern Greek literature.” Palamas was one of the co-founders of the so-called New Athenian School.
