The Revival of Classical Architecture in Athens, 1830-1840: Educational Institutions designed by Christian Hansen and Stamatios Kleanthis

The establishment of Athens as the capital of the independent Greek state in 1833 constituted an unprecedented challenge for Greek and western European architects. Many of those who travelled to Athens in the following decade contributed to the programme of urban renewal which gradually transformed the Ottoman town to a European capital. 1 These architects were required to serve a new national ideology that disdained Greece’s Ottoman past and sought to assert a direct link with classical antiquity. 2 To respond to this ideology, the public buildings of the new capital had to establish a connection with the revered relics of ancient Athens. 3 This was not the first time that these relics had left their mark on European architecture. Since the eighteenth century, surveys like that of James Stuart and Nicholas Revett, and theoretical treatises such as those of Johann Joachim Winckelmann and Marc-Antoine Laugier, had highlighted the significance of the ancient Greek architectural heritage and encouraged its revival. 4 The ‘Greek revival’ in European architecture had originated in mid-eighteenth-century England, and enjoyed considerable popularity in the first four decades of the nineteenth century, especially in Britain and parts of Germany. 5 During that time, prominent architects such as William Wilkins, Charles Robert Cockerell and Leo Von Klenze had travelled to Greece and southern Italy and studied ancient Greek buildings for short periods. 6 ‘Pro-Greek architects’ who did not visit Greece drew upon what could be gleaned from numerous publications, sometimes supplementing this information with the study of excavation fragments. 7 By contrast, all the architects who worked in Athens from the 1830s onwards benefitted from continuous exposure to the ancient Greek monuments which lay on their doorstep. The opportunity of surveying legendary monuments and the use of architecture as a tool to foster a new national identity gave new scope to the Greek revival.