Maximos Mansion, Official residence in central Athens, Greece
Maximos Mansion is a government residence in central Athens facing Irodou Attikou Street. Columns rise through two stories, balconies with wrought-iron railings surround the main facade, and a small manicured garden separates the building from the sidewalk.
Alexandros Michalinos, a shipowner from Chios, founded the mansion in 1912 on Irodou Attikou Street; it was designed by Anastasios Helmis. His widow Irene Manoussis, later wife of Dimitrios Maximos, sold the unfinished building in 1916 and bought it back in 1921. The Maximos family completed it and lived there until 1952, when the state bought it; from 1982 it has housed the prime minister's office.
The residence takes its name from Dimitrios Maximos, a postwar prime minister whose family used the property. Today security guards stand at the wrought-iron gates and neighboring buildings house government administrative offices.
The building sits about a ten-minute walk from Syntagma Square on a quiet side street. Access to the courtyard is not permitted but the opposite sidewalk and nearby green spaces offer views of the facade.
Dimitrios Maximos was an art lover, and the mansion's walls were hung with famous paintings. When the state bought the building in 1952 for 5.5 billion drachmas, half the eleven billion it had been valued at, he threw in the furniture and the paintings with it.
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