Historical Reference
“Ionia shook her blooming apron and the flowers fell under Hymettus”
This is how the young, then eternally in love, great Greek writer Menelaos Loundemis describes the first refugee “Pangrati settlement” of 1924 and its refugee girls.
Little by little, this neighborhood transformed into a large melting pot of every population peculiarity and social stratification and today, after almost a century, it has evolved into a large Municipality, which now dominates the heart and foothills of Hymettus.
It took its final name from the great philhellene revolutionary poet George Gordon Byron, known to us as Lord Byron, in April 1924, on the 100th anniversary of his voluntary sacrifice at Messolonghi.
For nine years, this settlement was administered by persons appointed by the Municipality of Athens, the so-called "Trustees". In 1933, it became a separate community, but without acquiring its own elected administration. It finally became an independent Municipality in 1934. The first Mayor was elected as the first Mayor, the Asia Minor doctor Nikolaos Fragkiadis.
In 1924, the Holy Trinity Elementary School complex began operating in Byron. In 1934, the “Polyiatreio” (today the Byron Health Center) was founded, which has been operating since then in a building next to the Holy Trinity Grove.
During the years of fascist occupation, Byron was a pioneer in our National Resistance. Hundreds of Byronians gave their lives in this struggle. Among the high points of this epic is the “blockade” of August 7, 1944, when the Nazis murdered 12 young men, eleven Greeks and an Italian anti-fascist. Another 1,000 or so were taken hostage and eventually about 600 were sent to forced labor in camps in Germany. Many of them did not return home alive.
After the liberation in December 1944, in the "Battle of Athens", Byronas found itself once again in the eye of the storm, a protagonist, along with Kaisariani, in a "theater of the absurd".
After the end of the civil war, some reconstruction efforts began in the Municipality. In 1955, the first six-grade Gymnasium was founded. It initially operated as an annex of the 7th Gymnasium of Pagrati. It was housed in the building of the 4th Municipal School (Charalampopoulos) and then in the building of the Pataria School, on Attaleias Street. Since 1957, it became an independent Byronas Gymnasium and since 1962 it has been housed in its own building in the Ascension Grove.
The first playground was inaugurated in 1961 in the Agia Triada Grove under Mayor Ach. Georgoutsos. And the first K.A.P.I. operated in 1978 in the polyclinic under Mayor Theofilos Fatseas.
From 1957-8, the mass settlement of Kareas began, initially by Armenian, Greek-Romanian and Pontic Greek refugees. It continued with the construction of many dozens of apartment buildings during the 80s-90s, which had already happened in the center of Byron.
The total area of the Municipality is currently approximately 9,000 acres and its residents are estimated at approximately 110-120 thousand.
Cultural activity in Byron has been of high quality at times. It is fueled - and not only symbolically - by its own name, dedicated to the memory of one of the leading intellectual figures of the 19th century, by the legacy left to us by the brief but resonant passage through our neighborhood, the now legendary artistic figure of Isidore Duncan, and by a series of other unforgettable figures of art, science and culture, who lived and were hosted in our refugee poorhouses, such as Eleni Glykatzi Arveler, Konstantinos Despotopoulos, Menelaos Loundemis, Iakovos Kambanelis, Dim. Psathas, etc.
Apostolos K. Kokolias
Historian, Writer, Lawyer