Archives

We believe that Athens deserves an ambitious research project that will address the various aspects of its urban history—that is, its entire history—from 1834, when it was declared capital, to the present.

The main problem that researchers face is the lack of a comprehensive Athens Historical Archive, which would bring together a large proportion of the archives that are currently scattered across the capital and held by various public agencies, organisations, associations and museums. These archives are often unsorted and uncatalogued, and one must be imaginative, persistent and patient in order to gain access to them, as this often requires special permits granted only through time-consuming procedures.

To this day, we have indexed a considerable volume of municipal, notarial, judicial and church archives and processed them into electronic databases. The statistical results are used, amongst other things, in Eugenia Bournova’s Urban History course .