Stadiou - Panepistimiou

The ΑΒ7: ECLIPSE inhabits three neighbouring landmark buildings of the historic centre of Athens: the Former Department Store Fokas, the Former Santaroza Courthouse in Justice Square, and Schliemann-Mela Hall. These closely knit emblematic ghost buildings reflect various aspects and eras of the historical, cultural and architectural Athenian urban landscape.

Former Department Store FOKAS

The Former Department Store Fokas, one of the biggest buildings on Stadiou Street, located in downtown Athens, is the main venue of the 7th Athens Biennale ECLIPSE. The eight-level Interwar Period building, with the preserved facade and interior arcade, used to operate as a department store from 2001 up to 2013, when it got abandoned. Deserted up to today, this building is still full of evidence of its former commercial use reflecting the history, the adventures, and the transitions of contemporary Greece.

The AB7: ECLIPSE main venue functions as an omen of a potential upcoming of a post-capitalist era.

Photos: Nysos Vasilopoulos

Former Santaroza Courthouse

Across the street from the Fokas building lies the Former Santaroza Courthouse, one of the first public and most emblematic buildings to be constructed all along the establishment of the modern Greek state.

This building, designed by architect Joseph Hoffer, operated through seventy years as the Royal and then National Printing House, up to 1906. The destruction sustained by a fire in 1854 has been crucial and its rehabilitation came no earlier than the Interwar Period when transformed to a Courthouse under the supervision of architect Foivos Zoukis. Architectural elements such as the second-floor addition, the neoclassical style main entrance and the rosace-frieze decoration, still remain unaffected up to nowadays. This has been the place where, in 1951, the famous resistance partisan Nikos Beloyannis’s first trial took place.

Santaroza building, sealed over almost 35 years, articulates a territorial bond between the AB7: ECLIPSE venues.

Photos: Nysos Vasilopoulos

Justice Square

The Justice Square, located at the northeast part of the Former Santaroza Courthouse, remains in limbo over the years. Although placed between two of the arterial roads of the city centre, Stadiou and Panepistimiou streets, the 1980s vivid and buzzing square has been abandoned many years now, after the Courthouse’s transfer.

Diverse parallel events of the AB7: ECLIPSE emerge from the square, activating its embedded centre.

Photos: Nysos Vasilopoulos

Schliemann-Mela Hall

The five-level neo-baroque Schliemann-Mela Hall was designed by Ernst Ziller, between 1880 and 1890, towards the formation of an architectural style, consistent with the modern Greek state identity and also with the new image of Athens.

The Schliemann-Mela Hall initially used to host residences, offices and shops, was gradually converted into a building of exclusively commercial and professional use. Some milestones of its history are the schools’ accommodation during the German Occupation, as well as the housing of the second-oldest cinema of Athens, Ideal, on the ground floor since 1919, along with the Ideal restaurant, now closed. As time went on, the building got desolated.

The ΑΒ7: ECLIPSE activates Schliemann-Mela Hall, illuminating various aspects of the building, like the once vivid shops on the ground floor, such as the historic "Aegean Doughnuts" pastry shop, and its dimly lit, decommissioned first two floors.

Photos: Nysos Vasilopoulos

Onassis Stegi

Onassis STEGI is the place where contemporary CULTURE meets aesthetics and science. The place where courageous, restless, daring Greek artists find the means to showcase their work; the place where international collaborations are nurtured; the stage on which the boundaries between science, art, society, EDUCATION, learning and politics are renegotiated. Above all, Onassis STEGI is the space where questions are asked which feed the mind and spirit, which query givens, with this ideal ultimate goal: generating actions, interventions and ideas which shape and shake society.

The Onassis STEGI building hosts theatrical and musical productions, film screenings, art and digital shows, but its activities and central concept extend beyond the four walls of the center on Syngrou Avenue.