Sunday 13 February 2011

The Booze Market

                                                                                                                           
If you walk down Kolokotroni street and stroll through Booze bar into the Kourtaki Arcade you might be able to catch a “weekends only” event known as the Booze Market.

This eclectic little market is the brainchild of Marina Coriolano Lykourezos and her partner, Yiannis Yiannakos, co founders of The Crafts Factory. Marina and Yianni have joined forces with the owner of Booze bar, Nikos Louvros, to make best use of some wonderful old buildings in the centre of Athens.

Although most retailers in Athens are currently reporting low sales, since it’s first appearance over the Christmas holidays, the Booze Market has been doing pretty well. That’s not too surprising, really, as its stalls are packed with quirky, unusual items that are mostly hand made by local craftsmen, and if you are looking for a gift I don’t think there are many better places to go.

The market is open on Saturdays and Sundays and I definitely recommend you try to visit the next one. Make an afternoon of it and stop to have a drink in Booze before going home. It’s a fun and relaxing way to while away a few hours and possibly pick up a bargain or two and make some new friends!

 (Check the facebook page: The Booze Market by the Crafts Factory for dates) 


Saturday 12 February 2011

Atenistas "Fix my City" Map

(photo from Atenistas clean-up on Phaliro beach, 2011)


Wow! What a great idea! If you are fed up with graffiti, tagging, garbage, cars parked on the pavements or painted over road signs, now you can let the Atenistas know about the problems on a street near you. Just click on the link: Atenistas Map and take it from there!

Friday 11 February 2011

The Ilias Lalaounis Jewelry Museum



The Ilias Lalaounis Jewelry Museum first opened it’s doors to the public in 1993. Since then, it has been educating, enlightening and enchanting almost everyone who visits this unique space dedicated to jewelry and the decorative arts.
I was completely captivated by this 'boutique' museum from the moment I stepped foot inside. I loved the jeweler, making jewelry inside the foyer in his own small workshop- I loved the fact that he was obviously a long term employee of the Lalaounis family business and would probably have been retired years ago from any other company- and I loved the sense that this is very much a ‘working’ and ‘living’ museum.

Talking with Ioanna Lalaounis later, she reinforced that first imression by stressing that the main emphasis within the museum lies on learning, and to that effect they house a large research library that is open to the public in the building next door. There are also many cultural and educational programmes on offer both for children and adults.

When I visited the museum, I was lucky enough to see a wonderful temporary exhibition which celebrated outwardly traditional stereotypes of femininity through three quirky and off beat private collections.
Liza Gramatikopoulou Moussi lent a collection of Japanese hair ornaments and objects d’arts. Also on show is Maria Totomi's amazing collection of thimbles- almost any type of thimble imaginable- some with famous faces, some made from precious metals, and some carved roughly from wood for the more humble seamstresses.

But my favourite collection must be the miniature shoes lent by Sofia Barbaresou. There is almost every type of shoe represented, from 17th century satin slippers to Cinderella’s glass slippers to ballet slippers! Even the humble flip flop has a place. I'm not a collector, but I have to say that this show of shoes did make a little jealous!


Don’t miss out on the opportunity to visit this wonderful ltitle museum- it is truly a gem!






Wednesday 9 February 2011

The Duchess of Plaisance



There is a sense of mystery and magnetism clinging to the figure of the Duchess of Plaisance. I, like most people, was captivated by her story from the moment I first heard of her but really, I knew almost nothing about her. Most Athenians are familiar with her name and there is even a metro station named after her but most of us have heard only the myths and legends surrounding the duchess, not the historical facts.

I think the hugely popular winter 2011 exhibition in the Byzantine and Christian Museum really dispelled the myth and brought this fascinating figure into a clearer perspective. 

 This museum was an ideal venue to get to know the duchess as it was once her residence,  but I’m getting ahead of the story……

Sophie de Marbois-Lebrun was born in 1785 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where her father, Francois BarbĂ© Marbois,  was serving as the French Consul General.

At around seventeen Sophie married Charles Lebrun, who inherited the title of Duc de Plaisance, or Piacenza as it is known in Italy. In October 1804, Sophie gave birth to a daughter, Eliza LeBrun de Plaisance. There were to be no other children as their marriage was an unhappy one and by the early 1820s it had reached crisis point. By then, matters had degenerated to such a degree that Sophie claimed her husband wanted to kill her and soon after, the couple wisely decided to live separate lives. Sophie chose to live in Italy and Francois in Holland.

Possibly, the duchess's personal unhappiness found an outlet in her championing of the cause of Greek independence. After meeting the man who would become the first head of state of a newly liberated Greece, Count Ioannis Capodistrias, in Paris in 1826, the duchess became a generous benefactor to the Greek liberation effort. 

Within a few years of the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence, both the duchess and her daughter Eliza were well known champions of the Greek cause and found themselves at the forefront of the wave of Philhellenism which was sweeping across Western Europe. Mother and daughter were united toward donating large sums of money to the Greek effort and one source records that Eliza raised a significant proportion of the funds herself by selling her jewelry.

In January 1830 the Genike Ephimerida tes Ellados announced that the 'Duchesse de Plaisance' and her daughter had arrived in Nafplio, the capital of Greece at this time. Their old acquaintance Ioannes Capodistrias had been president of Greece for just over two years, but, for whatever reason, the relationship between Capodistrias and the duchess soured rapidly, and she became outspokenly opposed to his political views and left for Italy. 

After a four year absence, the duchess returned to Greece in 1834 and settled in the new capital of Athens. Greece now had a Bavarian King, Otto, but the duchess chose not to mix freely in court circles and lived at first in a rented mansion on Pireos street. During this period, the duchess seized the opportunity to travel to the middle east and Beirut, where, sadly, her daughter Eliza died. 

Devastated by her daughters death she returned to Athens carrying Eliza's embalmed remains. True to the promise she made to her dying daughter never to leave her side, she kept her coffin in the house where she took up residence.

This caused some concern amongst the Athenians who whispered that she would hold long and animated conversations with her deceased daughter.

Perhaps the duchess's greatest legacy to Greece is through all the building work she commissioned during her life in Athens. Her construction work began when she purchased huge tracts of land from the monastery of Pendeli and engaged the architect Stamatios Kleanthis to design a palace for her on the slopes of Mount Pendeli. According to records, she purchased 1700 stremmata of land off the abbot for seven and a half thousand drachma.

I find it so sad that today this mansion in Pendeli looks forgotten and shuttered, and it’s not an easy task to find it as the signposting is dismal. I know I had visited the mansion many years ago but I really couldn't remember how to find it, or even in what part of northern Athens it was. 

Following a friend's advice to "drive up Pendelis avenue, and keep on driving" I eventually arrived in a plateia where I could ask directions from a local grocers shop. Even so, I still managed to miss the single tiny sign that points to the duchess's Pendeli residence. 

I am sure that unless someone in the Ministry of Culture (or wherever) sits up and takes notice fairly soon, this mansion will crumble and slowly degenerate into a pile of rubble.

Luckily, the Villa Ilissia, completed by Kleanthis in 1848 is not suffering the same fate. Today it houses the Byzantine and Christian museum and, when I visited in 2011, was in the process of external renovation work. However, you can see the similarity in architectural styles between the two palaces. 
Byzantine and Christian Museum

The duchess was a central figure in the social life of Otthonian Athens. Her generosity was legendary and her love of learning meant she sponsored many young Greek women, enabling them to get an education. She also loved to host symposia on topics such as religion and politics.

But the duchess was just a bit too unconventional for Athenian society of her time. Her probable conversion to Judaism, and the sponsoring of the building of a synagogue in Evia would not have been a popular move and would have alienated her from the mainstream.

Later in life Sophie commissioned Kleanthis again, this time to build a final home and resting place for her daughter's remains. Sadly, she would never live to see this Castle of Rodanthi completed as it caught fire and burned to the ground while still under construction. Following the fire the duchess withdrew from public life until her death in 1854 at the age of 69.

I think she probably encouraged the legends and rumours that grew up around her. Obviously, she was a bit of an oddball and some of the outrageous sounding stories were probably based on some semblance of truth. She definitely did have her daughter embalmed and placed in the basement of her house, she did grant titles of nobility at whim to those she liked, she dabbled in mysticism and she had contact with many of the bandits that roamed the hills surrounding Athens but to me, all these traits just add to her glamour and appeal as one of the liveliest and most fascinating figures in early modern Greek history.

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