Gazi, from industrial backwater to urban hot spot

 Study sheds light on history of gasworks district that has become an Athens nightlife hub

By Apostolos Lakasas

A squeeze of young people in their late teens and early 20s ascend the escalator leading out of the Kerameikos metro station. It is Saturday night and soon they will be lost in the throngs that descend on the central Athenian neighborhoods of Kerameikos and Gazi every weekend, disappearing into trendy bars, cafes, galleries and restaurants.

Gazohori, as the two adjacent neighborhoods have come to be collectively known, is abuzz with life breathed in by the dictates of what is cool right now. The industrial element that has marked the area for the last 150 years thanks to the old gasworks melds well with new minimalist constructions as they stand together on the solid bedrock of the neighborhood’s long history.

Run-down shacks and decrepit sheds, signs of desertion, poverty and degradation, hunger and death: This is where it started 150 years ago for a neighborhood that has today evolved into one of Athens hottest spots. The history of Gazohori – “Gas-village” – unfolds in the pages of a recent Greek study titled “Gazi 1900-60: The Socio-Professional Evolution of a Neighborhood,” written by associate professor at Athens University Eugenia Bournova, historian Myrto Dimitropoulou and cartographer-geographer Stavros Nikiforos Spyrellis from the University of Reims Champagne-Ardenne in France.

Gazi was included in the town plan in 1880, with its form being determined by pre-existing roads. Its main landmark was the gas plant on present-day Pireos Street, now a cultural complex. Its boundaries were not clearly defined, so the researchers have delineated the neighborhood as occupying the area between Pireos, Constantinoupoleos...