First Athens Cemetery
The First Athens Cemetery ( Greek Πρώτο Νεκροταφείο Αθηνών Próto Nekrotafío Athinón ) is the oldest in use burial place in the city of Athens . Since it was built in 1834, it has been the final resting place of numerous important Greeks and foreigners. It is of art historical importance as an original ensemble of many mausoleums and grave sculptures from the time of Greek neoclassicism .
history
During the time of the Ottoman Empire , Orthodox Christians in Greece were buried in churchyards around the places of worship. Non-Orthodox Christians, especially foreigners, found their final resting place around the church of St. George in the ancient temple of Hephaestus and in the Capuchin monastery in Athens. Only the Muslims were buried not only around the mosques, but also in specially constructed cemeteries. When the capital of Greece, which had been independent since 1829, was moved to Athens in 1833, the entire court of Otto I and a large number of Bavarian officials moved to the city. The new metropolis attracted many artists and traders from the Aegean region and Western Europe who settled here. The now numerous Catholics first gathered in a converted Tekke on the site of the Roman Agora and were given a new church building in 1842–1844 with the Church of St. Luke by Hans Christian Hansen in Heraklion . The Church of St. Paul in downtown Athens was built for the Anglicans in 1838–1843, followed by Leo von Klenze's Catholic Cathedral of St. Dionysius in the immediate vicinity of the university in 1853–1887 .
The burial of Orthodox Greeks around the churches was forbidden by a royal decree of 1834, the cemeteries to be built for the dead were under the supervision of the cities and municipalities. The newly decreed burial order also required that every cemetery be at least a hundred meters away from urban settlement. For Athens, a site was chosen beyond the Ilisos on the south-western slope of the Ardittos hill, east of the old road connection to Sounion , a few hundred meters from the southern settlement border of the city, which then had 4,000 inhabitants. Eduard Schaubert and Stamatios Kleanthis had already designated the area south of the city for the cemetery when they planned Athens in 1833 .
Since that time the Athens cemetery has appeared in the city plans, the earliest plan of the cemetery itself comes from the Athens city architect Armodios Vlachos in 1896. Here are a central axis from the entrance building to the central Lazarus church, where the graves of prominent people were, and two from the square around to recognize the Church Y-like branching off the main roads, making the systems of major European cemeteries, especially of the Paris Pere Lachaise is similar. The park-like layout of the cemetery can only be guessed from a further plan from 1910. The cemetery was extended uphill to the northwest between 1859 and 1943. After the Hephaestus Temple was rededicated as a sight, Catholics were also buried in the cemetery (the oldest surviving tomb dates from 1860), and around 1880 separate areas were set up for Protestants and Jews.
investment
The site is accessed from the north-west towards the city and entered through an entrance building that was built in 1939 by Aris Konstantinidis and Andreas Ploumistou. Immediately to the left is the Church of St. Theodore, built between 1899 and 1901 according to plans by the architect Armodios Vlachos. From here there is an initially quite wide main street, which - similar to the procession street of the Keramikos cemetery in antiquity - leads to the church of St. Lazarus, lined with graves of important personalities, which was first built in 1840 and given its present form in 1859 . Behind it is a Byzantine ossuary designed by the architect Emmanouil Lazaridis from 1928. A path branches off south of the small square around the church, which leads to the Catholic chapel of St. Charles, which was built in 1925. Outside the oldest part, which is almost rectangular, the area was expanded to the east and south. The Protestant cemetery is located in the east on the slope and is separated from the rest of the area by a wall. Today it is administered every four years by the states of Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. The southern corner of the cemetery grounds houses the Jewish cemetery, which is no longer in operation today.
Important works of art
Many grave mausoleums are art-historically significant examples of neoclassicism. Particularly well-known is Heinrich Schliemann's mausoleum executed by Ernst Ziller , which is designed as a Doric temple with a surrounding frieze roughly in the proportions of the Athens Niketempel and dominates the entrance area of the cemetery.
The grave sculptures were mainly carved by marble sculptors from Tinos . The most famous is the sculpture of the reclining Sofia Afendaki by the sculptor Giannoulis Chalepas , which, like many sculptures in the cemetery , is influenced by the classicism of Antonio Canova .
Other artists who made tombs or sculptures were Lysandors Kaftandzoglou , Ioannis Vitsaris , Lazaros Fytalis , Georgios Vidalis and Dimitrios Fillipotis .
Graves of famous people
The following people are buried in the First Athens Cemetery:
- Georgios Averoff (1818–1899), Greek businessman
- Christos Bistis (1939-2016), Greek resistance fighter
- Sotiria Bellou (1921–1997), Greek singer
- Christodoulos I (1939–2008), Archbishop of Athens and Head of the Church of Greece
- Richard Church (1784–1873), Irish philhellene and general in the Greek Revolution
- Jules Dassin (1911–2008), American film director
- Adolf Furtwängler (1853–1907), German archaeologist
- Humphrey Jennings (1907–1950), British filmmaker
- Stelios Kazantzidis (1931-2001), Greek singer
- Konstantin Kanaris (1790–1877), Greek politician
- Theodoros Kolokotronis (1770–1843), Greek freedom fighter in the revolution of 1821
- Alexandros Koumoundouros (1817-1883), Greek politician
- Grigoris Lambrakis (1912–1963), Greek politician
- Melina Mercouri (1920–1994), Greek singer, actress and politician
- Augustus C. Merriam (1843–1895), American classical philologist, archaeologist, and epigraphist
- Andreas Michalakopoulos (1876–1938), Greek politician
- Alekos Panagoulis (1939–1976), Greek resistance fighter against the junta , politician and poet
- Andreas Papandreou (1919–1996), first socialist prime minister of Greece
- Georgios Papandreou (1888–1968), Greek politician
- Katina Paxinou (1900–1973), Greek actress
- Demis Roussos (1946-2015), Greek singer
- Heinrich Schliemann (1822–1890), German archaeologist
- Giorgos Seferis (1900–1971), Greek poet and Nobel Prize winner
- Andreas Syngros (1830–1899), Greek banker
- Vassilis Tsitsanis (1915–1984), Greek singer, composer and bouzouki virtuoso
- Iwan Varvakis (1745-1825), member of the Filiki Eteria
- Sofia Vembo (1910–1978), Greek singer
- Aliki Vougiouklaki (1934–1996), Greek singer and actress
- Terence Hanbury White (1906–1964), British writer
- Ernst Ziller (1837–1923), German-Greek architect, building researcher and archaeologist
Georgios Averoff
Adolf Furtwängler
Theodoros Kolokotronis
Alekos Panagoulis
Andreas Papandreou
Andreas Syngros
Sofia Vembo
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Web links
- Contribution to the First Athens Cemetery on monumenta.org (Greek)
- List of buried personalities on findagrave.com
- First Athens Cemetery at athensinfoguide.com
Coordinates: 37 ° 57 ′ 48 ″ N , 23 ° 44 ′ 17 ″ E