Mont Parnès Hotel
Today Parnis Casino

Mt Parnis, 1958-61

Architect
Pavlos Mylonas (1915-)



The cosmopolitan Mont Parnès Hotel, which today houses the Parnis Casino, is a work by Pavlos Mylonas - architect, professor and academician. The building offended the public opinion and political opposition of the period because of its luxury, but primarily because of its location on Mount Parnis, at an altitude of 1078 m., which was regarded as an act that damaged the Attica landscape. On the contrary, its modern lines ensured it of publicity abroad. This hotel is one of the two Greek buildings in the list of modern architectural works published by the well-known architect Pierre Vago in his Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, 158/1971.
The hotel is a large-scale building. It occupies an area with a maximum horizontal dimension of 200 m. and consists of four different volumes: the smaller that we encounter on the first level of the façade, the main volume of the building that includes a three-storey structure of hotel rooms and another two volumes, that of the nightclub to the east and a low hotel wing on the west. The effort to link the building with the environment was mainly based on the dark colour palette used on the surfaces and volumes that was selected by artist Yannis Tsarouchis.
The total number of beds in the hotel was 240. Of them, 140 are allocated to double rooms, divided among the floors of the three-storey building, while the remaining 100 are in the smaller volume on the façade and in the T-shaped west wing. In the basement of the hotel were reception area, lounges, reading rooms, restaurants, bars, gaming room, cinema and music theatre, flower shop, barber’s and other modern services for inhabitants and visitors. The public areas have an almost excessive spaciousness and multiplicity. In addition to the hotel, the programme made provision for an entire little settlement of bungalows which was never realised.
The hotel’s main hall, which is its centre in terms of function and traffic, is a very large rectangular space with many vanishing points. Many famous artists contributed to the decoration of the interior, among whom were painters Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghika and Yannis Moralis. All the furnishings were designed by the architect. Moreover, the landscaping of the surrounding area was also done to plans by the architect, including terraces, verandas and gardens.
The volume of the hotel room wing is varied by means of the slightly broken line it presents, thus softening its monolithic monotony. The balconies form multi-floor systems that allude to the doxata of Mount Athos monasteries. The ground floor is organised with high square piers, the balconies project out from the main volume, and the cornice projects outward even farther, forming two enormous wings with its slight incline. The memory of the architecture of the monastery of Simonos Petros on Mount Athens seals the plasticity of the whole.
The architect combines modern trends with memories of medieval Greek architecture and decorative tradition. The Hydraiot living room, forms of fireplaces, northern Greek sitting rooms, figures on the concrete, architectural features from Mount Athos monasteries, all co-exist in an eclecticist composition that invokes the continuation of the Greek tradition.

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