Kifissia

Kifisia or Kifissia (historically Kephisia or Cephissia; Greek: Κηφισιά, pronounced [cifiˈsça]) is a municipality belonging to the Athens urban area, Attica, Greece and a large northern suburb. It is mainly accessed by Kifisias Avenue, starting from central Athens and ending in the suburb of Nea Erythraia. It has traditionally been considered one of the most affluent suburbs of Athens and has been home to major Greek political families.

The municipality of Kifisia was formed during the 2011 local government reform by the merger of the Ekali, Kifisia and Nea Erythraia municipalities, that became municipal units of the larger administrative entity.^[3] The municipality has an area of 35.100 km² and the municipal unit of Kifisia, the largest, 25.937 km².^[4]

Ancient Athenian tradition named the mythical king of Athens, Cecrops I, as the founder of Cephisia, one of the 12 cities of Attica, created 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 sometime in the Mycenaean era, part of the Bronze Age, before even the time of king Theseus.

Cephisia was a separate deme (administrative subdivision) of the ancient Athenian state, home to the renowned dramatist Menander (circa 342-291 BC)^[6] and a hub for the Athenian elite due to its milder climate^[7], abundance of waters and distance from the city. It was centred around where it stands today, but covered a smaller area than today's enlarged municipality. The greatest housing density seemed to have been in 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 river (now Kokkinaras), where digs have revealed traces of the ancient eastbound road network, farmhouses, huts, a second, smaller graveyard and the local gymnasium.^[8]

Cephisia had already become a famous retreat of philosophers by the reign of the Roman emperor Hadrian when the wealthy 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.^[8] 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 remain in Platanou Square. Herodes also beautified a sanctuary to the Nymphs in a cave close to the banks of the Pyrna,^[9] home to a local oracle in earlier periods.^[10]

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 originally provided with a fireplace.^[9]

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).^[11]

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 not left by the wayside, as supported by claims of an Ottoman governor eventually constructing his own tower in the vicinity and of a mosque being built where Platanou Square now stands.^[11]

Kifisia was visited by the Turkish traveller Evliya Çelebi in 1667 on his journey to Athens. He described the hamlet first hand:^[9]

"[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 masjid, 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..."

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 Ottoman commander's former house.^[11] Kifisia thus became a fully Christian town, similarly to innumerable other places across the newly-independent nation.

For the same reasons since antiquity, the distant hamlet attracted the wealthy from early on. King Otto of Greece, most notably, had a house on what is now Othonos street and often went horse riding in the area.^[11] 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.^[13]

The popularity of Kifisia somewhat faded during the mid-19th century, when the practice of brigandage 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^[14], ushered in a period of great development.

It gradually became fashionable for wealthy Athenian families to acquire or build their summer estates in Kifisia, continuing the historical trend, and keen social competition led to the creation of a unique architectural ambiance, as villas in ever more exotic styles proliferated. For those unable to afford a domicile of their own, many opulent hotels were built by the 1920s, where the slightly less affluent could spend the holiday months rubbing shoulders with their social betters. The interwar period only helped raise the suburb's prominence, when the leaders of the two main rival political parties frequented different hotels in the town together with their most notable supporters.^[9] 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, writer Penelope Delta and nationalist politician and future dictator Ioannis Metaxas were only a few of them.

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.^[11]

Following the liberation of Greece from Axis occupation in 1944, the British Royal Air Force ill-advisedly made its headquarters in the area of Kefalari, spread across three neighboring 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, besieged, then forced to surrender, with the prisoners marched across the mountains into northern Greece; being released in Trikala only after a truce had been arranged.^[9]

Kifisia is situated in central Attica, in the northernmost part of the Athenian (or Attic) Plain, spanning the area between the Penteli mountain range to its east and the Kifisos river to the west. It is situated 12 km northeast of Athens city centre. The built-up area of Kifisia is continuous with those of the neighbouring suburbs of Lykovrysi, Nea Erythraia (administratively belonging to Kifisia Municipality but considered a separate area), Marousi and Pefki.

The main neighborhoods of Kifisia are Adames, Ano Kifisia, Kato Kifisia, Alonia, Kefalari, Nea Kifisia and Polit(e)ia^[15]. The oldest areas are around Kato Kifisia and Alonia, while the other areas were gradually built up after the Greek Civil War and as recently as into the 80s and 90s.

The most important thoroughfare is Kifisias Avenue, crossing the entire suburb north-south and connecting it with central Athens and the A6 toll motorway (Attiki Odos) to the south and Drosia and Dionysos to the north. Other avenues exist, smaller and only locally important, connecting the different neighborhoods of the wider municipality with each other, as well as with neighboring municipalities; some of the most important are Tatoiou, Charilaou Trikoupi, Elaion and Agion Saranta. Kifisia station is the north terminus of Line 1 of the Athens metro system, originally built in the 1950s, although the location has been used as a station for much longer. The main bus lines are 550, 721, Α7, 503 and 504.^[16]

Kifisia has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate (Csa) with hot, dry summers and cool, rainy winters. Owing to its slightly higher elevation and increased foliage in comparison to Athens, Kifisia, similarly to other areas on the northernmost edges of the Athenian plain, has a significantly lower mean annual temperature than downtown Athens and the coastal parts of the urban area(16.1 °C), according to the 1956–2010 annual average of the adjacent weather station of Tatoi, though this has slightly increased in recent years.

Yearly precipitation totals around 450 mm, one of the highest values for the whole Athens basin, mostly due to the higher amounts of precipitation received caused by Lake-effect rain or snow from the Aegean Sea to the north-east in the winter months^[17] and the somewhat more frequent occasional summer thunderstorms, when compared to the rest of the city. Snow in particular, though not excessively common, can cause heavy disruption to daily life as it occasionally falls in large amounts during short periods. Notably, snow accumulation had reached 80 cm during a severe snowstorm on 4–6 January 2002.^[18]

Accenture, Aegean Airlines, Barcleys, BP, Eurobank Ergasias, Eltrak, Ellaktor, Kioleides, Ferrari Metaxa, Metro S.A., Volvo and others have their head office in Kifisia.^[20]

The Goulandris Museum of Natural History is situated in the heart of Kifissia and has collections from the natural wildlife of the Greek territory.^[21]

Kifissia has several sport clubs in different sports.^[22] The most notable among them are ZAON, a club with many panhellenic titles in Greek women's volleyball, Kifissia AC, which plays almost constantly in men's volleyball first division (A1 Ethniki), and Nea Kifissia B.C. that plays in basketball first division (Greek Basket League).

The football team of Kifissia is Kifissia F.C. and it participates in Super League Greece (top division). Kifissia is also the seat of Athina 90 (most times winner in Futsal League), AOH Hymettus (most times winner in Field Hockey League), and Iraklis Kifissias has a presence in A1 Womens' Category, with more than 200 athletes in Iraklis Kifissias Volleyball Academy.

• Menander (circa 342-291 BC), dramatist, born in Kifisia
• Emmanuel Benakis, merchant and politician, died in Kifisia^[28]
• Andreas Empeirikos (1901 in Romania - August 3, 1975), poet, died in Kifisia
• Penelope Delta (1874 Alexandria – 27 April 1941)^[29]
• Theodoros Pangalos (1878–1952), general, died in Kifisia
• Themistoklis Sophoulis (1860–1949), politician, died in Kifisia
• Ioannis Metaxas (12 April 1871 – 29 January 1941), politician and major general of the Hellenic Army, died in Kifisia
• Evgenios Spatharis (1924–2009), shadow theatre artist, born in Kifisia^[30]
• Antonis Samaras (born 1951), politician and grandson of Penelope Delta

• Official website (in Greek)