Metaxourgeio

This guide to Metaxourgeio in Athens traces one building through nearly every use a building can have: designed in 1833 as a grand commercial arcade, it sat empty for years, briefly served as a hospital, then in 1855 became the silk mill that gave the neighborhood its name, employing hundreds of workers on some of the country's first steam machinery. You'll hear how cheaper silk from China silenced the looms by 1875, and what the building sheltered during the wartime resistance decades later. It follows the site through fire and decades standing hollow before its next chapter.