Papakosta Mansion

At 119 Karaiskou Street stands the building known as the “former Cinema High-Life “. It was built by the architect V. Tsagris as the Papakosta Brothers Mansion, which was completed in 1925. The beginning of the operation of the “High-Life” cinema is recorded in the interwar years. On the upper floors of the building, the operation of the Papakosta Girls’ School continued. In 1924 and in a second phase, V. Tsagris added a new construction to it, turning it into a four-story building. The High-life cinema was located on the ground floor of the building, had an outdoor balcony and music stage and operated until 2005. There were also two leisure shops on the ground floor and office space on the upper floors. The building also housed the local organization of the Communist Party of Greece from 1985 to 2019. Recently it was purchased by a large multinational company. On the ground floor, the shops are separated by the presence of piers, which are decorated with architrave beads in the plaster, giving the impression of a masonry technique using a series of built-in stones in a vertical direction to the ground. The three upper floors follow a different format, with receding semi-open spaces, separated by double piers with simplified geometric imposts, bearing an entablature. The first floor has a triple balcony with a distinctive Art Nouveau balustrade, matching that on the second-floor balcony. The fourth and fifth floors are a later addition (1986). The face, on Karaiskou Street, also has false pilasters with an impost and part of an entablature, which frame the central part of the openings.