Psyri

This guide to Psyri in Athens opens on the koutsavakides, the swaggering gang of self-styled tough guys who ran these streets with gambling, protection rackets and knife fights through the 1870s, and for whom the neighborhood's Heroes Square was named as a joke. It follows the arrival, in 1893, of a new police major, Dimitrios Bairaktaris, who took one look at the koutsavakides' look and decided how to break it without ever drawing a gun. You'll also hear how Psyri sat abandoned for a century before its lanes filled with bars again in the 1990s.