Hilton Athens Hotel | Athens – Greece
Built between 1958 and 1963 on Vassilissis Sofias Avenue, the Hilton Athens Hotel is one of the most iconic architectural landmarks of modern Greece and the country's first major international chain hotel. Designed by Greek architects Prokopis Vasileiadis, Emmanuel Vourekas and Spyros Staikos, with the collaboration of Antonis Georgiadis and interiors by the New York office of Warner, Burns, Toan and Lunde, the building represents the purest expression of the International Style applied to the Athenian context: Pentelic marble, clean lines and an identity that is unmistakably both Greek and modern.
Inaugurated on April 20, 1963 in the presence of Conrad Hilton himself, the hotel immediately became a cultural and social landmark of Athens, hosting the city’s first contemporary art gallery in collaboration with Marilena Liacopoulou. The monumental frieze on the building’s north facade, created by master artist Yiannis Moralis and commissioned in 1958, engages with Greek artistic traditions through an extraordinarily modern abstract language.
In anticipation of the 2004 Athens Olympics, the hotel underwent radical renovation and extension by AETER Architects with designers Alexandros Tombazis and Charis Bougadelis: 527 rooms and suites, 4 restaurants and bars, 14 conference halls, a 1,500 m² Health Club and a new wing of 84 rooms on six floors, all while preserving the original architectural character intact. In January 2022 the hotel closed for a further transformation that will see it reopen as Conrad Athens under the name “The Ilisian”.
Year
1963 / Olympic renovation: 2003
Original Architects
Prokopis Vasileiadis, Emmanuel Vourekas, Spyros Staikos
Facade Art
Yiannis Moralis
2003 Renovation Studio
AETER Architects (Alexandros Tombazis, Charis Bougadelis)
