Kifissia

Antiquity

Origins

The geographer Strabo named Cephisia (Ancient Greek: Κηφισία), named for the Cephisus river that was considered to sprout from that territory,^[3] as one of the twelve original cities of Attica founded by Cecrops I, the mythical first king of Athens,^[4] as a way to unite several disparate settlements into cohesive entities as to allow unitary administration, laws and governance under one ruler.^[5] This would place its founding at some point in the Mycenaean era, part of the Bronze Age, before the time of the mythical king Theseus, who was considered the unifier of Attica (and thus also Cephisia) into a single, Athenian city-state. Cephisia is the only of those attested twelve cities in Attica, however, that has not yielded any remarkable archaeological remains from the Bronze Age.

Archaic and Classical era

Cephisia in the archaic and later classical era appears as a separate deme of the ancient Athenian state. It belonged to the Erechtheis tribe and sent six or eight delegates to the Athenian Boule (citizens' council)^[6], indicating an important, moderately-sized town. Its growth and prosperity was aided by its abundance in water^[7] (especially significant in a mostly dry Attica), large tracts of fertile land - often the subject of judicial disputes, attested to by surviving court speeches^[8] - and its strategic location at the northern edge of the Athenian plain, in the pine and barley-strewn fields between mount Pentelicus and mount Parnitha, on one of the roads to Diacria, Oropus and Boeotia. Its distance from the Athenian polis and its healthier climate and environment attracted the Athenian elite, who organised symposia in local estates.^[9]

Geographically, the deme was centred around where its centre stands today, though smaller than today's enlarged municipality. The greatest housing density seems to have been in today's Kato Kifisia, west of today's Kifisias Avenue, attested by archaeological findings that include a 200-person graveyard (4th century BC). Findings are sparser east of the modern avenue and north of the Pyrna stream (now Kokkinaras), where excavations in the areas of Kefalari, Kokkinaras and Nea Erythraia have revealed traces of the ancient eastbound road network, isolated farmhouses and huts, a second, smaller graveyard and the deme's gymnasium.^[6]

Cephisia was possibly one of the demes ravaged by the Spartans and their allies in one of their first invasions of Attica during the Peloponnesian War.^[10]

Roman era

Roman-era Cephisia was home to the renowned dramatist Menander (circa 342-291 BC)^[11] and was already reputed as a famous retreat of philosophers by the reign of Hadrian when the wealthy benefactor Herodes Atticus of Marathon built the Villa Cephisia as his personal estate, spanning a large area right in the middle of the town, roughly between the river and where Kifisia Grove stands today.^[6] It was also common for Herodes to provide free instruction in philosophy for selected youths from Athens. Funerary monuments, most likely belonging to Herodes' kin, still stand in today's Platanou Square. Herodes also beautified a pre-existing sanctuary to the Nymphs in a cave close to the banks of the Pyrna,^[12] home to a local oracle in earlier periods.^[13]

While we were students in Athens, Herodes Atticus, a man of consular rank and of true Grecian eloquence, often invited me to his country houses near that city [...] And there at that time, while we were with him at the villa called Cephisia, both in the heat of summer and under the burning autumnal sun, we protected ourselves against the trying temperature by the shade of its spacious groves, its long, soft promenades, the cool location of the house, its elegant baths with their abundance of sparkling water, and the charm of the villa as a whole, which was everywhere melodious with plashing waters and tuneful birds.

— Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae, § 1.2

Medieval Era (335–1456)

Historical information about medieval Kifisia remains sparse and anecdotal in nature, following Athens into at best provincial importance during the Byzantine period. The remains of a church from the period, dedicated to the Holy Virgin of the Swallow (Panayia Chelidonou) is associated with a folk tale about a battle fought there between local people and unspecified "invaders". This chapel is a rare example of a monastery church provided with a fireplace.^[12]

Continuing the tradition of Kifisia being a spot of repose for the wealthy, after the capture of Attica and its incorporation into the Duchy of Athens in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade, the village hosted the large estates of the feudal Frankish (later Catalan, Florentine and briefly Venetian) aristocracy, mostly between Profitis Ilias hill and the Alonia area (the word Alonia itself meaning threshing floors).^[14]

Ottoman Era (1456–1821)

In 1456, three years after the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453, Turkish general and governor of Thessaly Turahanoğlu Ömer Bey seized Athens and all its surrounding areas, expelling the ruling Acciaioli dynasty from Attica. The conquerors seized land for themselves across Attica and Kifisia was inlcuded in such areas; an Ottoman governor eventually constructed his own tower in the area and a mosque was built where Platanou Square now stands.^[14]

Kifisia was visited by the Turkish traveller Evliya Çelebi in 1667 on his journey to Athens, providing a first-hand description:^[12]

[Kifisia] is a small town in a fertile plain, adorned with three hundred beautiful houses with tiled roofs, whose inhabitants are half Muslim and half infidel rayahs. It has a mosque, a seminary, a school, a tekke, a hammam, a large inn and ten shops. It has no other institutions. Its beautiful, crisp, white cherries are famous. Its ridges and land areas are adorned only with olive trees, and at the top of each ridge stands a small church.

19th and early 20th centuries

With the Ottoman exit from southern Greece in the wake of the war of Independence in the 1820s, several formerly Muslim properties were taken by the rebelling Greeks, being seized after their owners fled, bought at a pittance or handed out by the Greek state after the war. Attica and Kifisia in particular was no exception. An example is the case of Georgios Kourtis, a Kifisia local who fought with general Georgios Karaiskakis in Attica and was rewarded with the local Ottoman administrator's former house.^[14]

The then-distant hamlet attracted the wealthy from early on for the same reasons as historically. King Otto of Greece, most notably, had a house on what is now Othonos street and often went horse riding in the area.^[14] The village was home to an Arvanitika-speaking community (although smaller than that of neighboring Marousi), however, due to its proximity to Athens, it soon underwent a language shift, similarly to the city of Athens itself, which also saw its local dialect of Greek (Old Athenian) rapidly fade out.^[16]

The popularity of Kifisia somewhat faded during the mid-19th century, when highway robbery and brigandage in central Greece reached endemic proportions and brigands like Christos "Davelis" Natsios and Loukas "Kakarapis" Beloulias ravaged the countryside of Attica and Boeotia with near impunity. However, the gradual suppression of brigandage and the arrival of the railway in May 1885, in the form of a trans-Attica locomotive called "the Beast" (θηρίο) by the locals^[17], ushered in a period of great development, as the suburb was seen by more and more Athenians as a holiday destination, with the perfect climate to escape the summer heat.

It gradually became fashionable for affluent Athenian families to acquire or build their country houses and estates in Kifisia, and keen social competition led to the creation of a unique architectural environment, as villas in ever more exotic styles proliferated. For those unable to afford a place to call their own in the prestigious suburb, many opulent hotels were built by the 1920s, including Xenia, Apergi and Pentelikon. Kifisia Grove opened in the same time period and quickly became both a community hub and the site of an annual springtime flower festival that continues to this day.

The interwar period only helped raise the suburb's prestigious reputation and prominence, when the leaders of the two main rival political parties frequented different hotels in the town together with their most notable supporters.^[12] The suburb by then was already home to several highly important figures of Greek history ever since the turn of the 20th century: renowned army officer Pavlos Melas in an earlier period, businessman and mayor of Athens Emmanouil Benakis, children's writer Penelope Delta and nationalist politician and future dictator Ioannis Metaxas were only a few of them.

World War II and Civil War

Dictator Ioannis Metaxas' rejection of the Italian ultimatum of surrender on the night of 27–28 October 1940, which led to the Greco-Italian war and is today commemorated as Ohi ("no") day in Greece and Greek communities abroad, happened in his house in Kifisia at the intersection of Dagklis and Kefallinias streets, which still stands today.^[14]

Following the liberation of Greece from Axis occupation in 1944, the British Royal Air Force made its headquarters in the area of Kefalari, spread across the area's three main hotels. With the outbreak of the Greek Civil War in Athens in December 1944, the hotels were ambushed on the night of 16–17 December, assaulted and besieged, then forced to surrender the same night. The prisoners were marched across the mountains outside of Attica entirely, released in Trikala only after a truce had been arranged.^[12]