Athens Hilton Hotel

Vas. Sophias Ave & Michalakopoulou St, Äthens, 1958-63

Architects
Emmanuel Vourekas (1905-1993)
Prokopios Vassiliadis (1912-1977)
Spyros Staikos (11913-),
Antonis Georgiadis (1921-)
Consulting architects:
Warner, Burn, Toan, Lunde



The Hilton Hotel was the first US-influenced highrise building acquired by Athens in the post-war period. Its strong presence, luxury and cosmopolitan character aroused lively political, cultural and urban planning discussions. If for its creators and for the political leadership of the country, the Athens Hilton was a symbol of technical and economic progress, its political and intellectual adversaries saw it as an act of "vandalism" on the Attic landscape.
From a construction and functional viewpoint, this Athenian hotel follows the typology of the luxury hotels of the era. In the base of the building are housed the public air-conditioned areas, while the ten-floor volume rising above it contains 463 air-conditioned rooms and four suites.
What sets the Athens Hilton apart from the other hotels of the same chain is its exterior. On its elevations, a mixed stylistic idiom was used, an inspired combination of modernism and classicism. In other words, it is an adaptation of the international modern code to the conditions prevailing in Athens with its pronounced neoclassical past. The architects had the brilliant idea of giving the main volume of the building a concave form, thus softening its rigidity and assisting its integration on the oddly-shaped lot, since the edges of the hotel are at right angles to the two main, converging thoroughfares of Vas. Konstantinou and Michalakopoulou. The subdivision of the volume into three vertical zones, the rhythmic organisation of the two main elevations and the use of optical corrections on the solid sides are all successful compositional choices. Today the Hilton Hotel is undergoing an interior refurbishment.

TRANSPORTATION