Aktaion Hotel

The construction of the large hotel “Aktaion” in Faliro was assigned to the architect Panos Karathanasopoulos. The hotel was built between 1897-1903 and inaugurated by the banker Ioannis Pesmazoglou. It was designed with development perpendicular to the beach, on an area of 10,000 square meters, mainly in the place where the old residence of Konstantinos Giannopoulos (the first resident of Neo Faliro) was located. It was a five-story hotel of 160 rooms, which included large luxurious function rooms and a hydrotherapy center. The exterior design of the building with the large balconies, vaulted roofs and arched openings on the faces, refer to an excellent example of Eclectic architecture, where the building volumes are scaled and prioritized based on the uses of the spaces and functions. Aktaion Hotel was for several years the center of the social and worldly life of Athens and Piraeus. Much of the building was destroyed in 1944 when the British bombed German targets in Piraeus, while its final demolition took place between November 1968 and June 1969.