‘Kastroplikta’, Eptapyrgiou Street

Photographs of the area of ‘kastroplikta’ on Eptapyrgiou Street in Ano Poli at the end of the 1980s juxtaposed with photographs of the same area in 2021. ‘Kastroplikta’ are small houses (most are between 40 and 70 square metres), constructed by the refugees after 1922 and built right against the city’s Byzantine walls or using the walls as part of the structure. They commonly have a small yard, an outdoor toilet, and are painted in different colours. Most of the remaining ‘kastroplikta’ in the Municipality of Thessaloniki are on Eptapyrgiou Street along the western walls, while few still stand along the eastern walls. There are about 150 such buildings in total, fewer than half of which are inhabited today. The long history of the demolition of these buildings and the removal of their inhabitants starts as early as 1931 with the Presidential Decree entitled ‘On the partial amendment of the zoning plan of Thessaloniki’ (GG 406 Α/04.12.1931), which stipulated that about 900 buildings along the city walls were to be demolished in order to make way for a green zone. Ever since then, the buildings that were due for demolition have been called ‘kastroplikta’.

Later, Thessaloniki’s walls were designated a world cultural site by UNESCO and the new zoning plans repeated the explicit stipulation that the ‘kastroplikta’ were to be demolished. In 1981, a decision was made to remove the inhabitants of ‘kastroplikta’ and relocate them in land plots in the Municipality of Polichni which would be acquired by the Housing and Urban Planning Public Company (DEPOS), but this effort failed. In the end, on the occasion of Thessaloniki’s tenure as European Cultural Capital for 1997, the demolition of ‘kastroplikta’ was announced with a view to showcasing the walls and creating a ‘green zone’ along them, an urban regeneration plan which was allocated a budget of 2,5 billion drachmas. Due to backlash from the residents and problems with resident compensation, both the demolition of the buildings and the wider redevelopment of the area were severely delayed and did not begin in earnest until after 2010. The demolition plan stipulates the establishment of a 20-metre-wide ‘green zone’ along the Byzantine walls and the preservation of 16 buildings with a simultaneous change of use from private residences to refugee cultural monuments. The redevelopment and maintenance of the walls was part of the Operation Programme ‘Competitiveness – Entrepreneurship – Innovation’ (EPAnEK) under the title ‘Maintenance and preservation of the northern, north-western and western walls of Thessaloniki’. The scheme aims at the ‘promotion of growth by utilising our natural and cultural heritage’ and has a budget of 2 million Euros.