The Benizelos konaki: the oldest house in Athens, behind a wall in Plaka

At number 96 Adrianou street, in the heart of Plaka, a high stone wall hides from view a courtyard and a two-storey building that almost no passer-by notices. It is the Archontiko Benizelon, the residence of the Benizelos family, considered the oldest surviving house in Athens and the only remaining example in the city of a konaki: the grand urban residence typical of cities under Ottoman rule. The present structure was built in the early sixteenth century and remodelled at the end of the seventeenth, and it lines up centuries that in Athens are usually skipped: between the classical Acropolis and the neoclassical city of the nineteenth century lies precisely this, the Ottoman era, all but erased from the urban fabric.

The Benizelos family

The house belonged to Angelos Benizelos, a member of an Athenian aristocratic family and father of Paraskevi, who later became a nun and is known as Saint Philothei: widowed very young, she founded a monastery not far from here, on the site where the Archdiocese of Athens now stands. For this reason the building is also known as the House of Saint Philothei. The property passed to the Ministry of Culture in 1972 and to the Archdiocese in 1999; the 2008-2009 restoration aimed to preserve the character of a pre-revolutionary noble residence, and the museum opened to the public only in February 2017. It is therefore a recent site, and this partly explains why it stays off the beaten track despite standing in the middle of a tourist quarter.

What you see

What you see once through the gate is tangible and hardly "museum-like". The building is a rectangle of about 9.3 by 23.7 metres, with the ground floor in stone and the upper floor largely of wood: above runs the hayati, the covered arcaded veranda facing the courtyard, from which you reach the interior rooms such as the ontas, the reception hall. On the ground floor there are three rooms and a portico: the first two preserve the pithoi, the great buried jars, and a press system for producing wine. In the courtyard there is a well. From a passage beside the third room you reach the rear court, where the remains of a late-Roman wall datable to AD 267 come to light: another layer of city within the same property.

The display is spare but well done: panels in Greek and English, video projections and a few interactive stations tell both the story of the building and of an Ottoman Athens of which very little remains. The visit is short, half an hour or a little more, and works well as a break while you explore Plaka. Admission is free; a small donation, given to charity, is appreciated.

Getting there

Getting there is easy and on foot. The most convenient metro stop is Monastiraki (blue and green lines), about 400 metres away, a five-minute walk along Adrianou; from Syntagma Square you get there in under ten minutes. It is worth planning the visit with attention to the hours: the museum is open every day except Monday, but the time slots are limited and have in the past also changed by season, so you should check the official site before turning up at the gate. For the rest, just lift your eyes from the stream of souvenir shops on Adrianou street: the stone wall at number 96 has been there for five centuries.

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