Queen's Tower, Gothic Revival villa in Ilion Municipality, Greece.
Queen's Tower is a Gothic Revival villa in Ilion Municipality featuring fortified walls, smaller towers, and wooden interiors with multiple types of timber throughout its rooms. The structure preserves its original architectural elements and displays 19th-century design details in both the exterior stonework and interior layout.
King Otto, the first king of modern Greece, bought the 200-hectare estate and built a small neo-Gothic castle there for his wife, Queen Amalia; its single tower gave the place its name. The design recalls Hohenschwangau Castle in Bavaria, built for Otto's brother Maximilian II. After Otto's abdication in 1862 the estate passed to the Serpieri family, who still own it.
The name Tour la Reine, French for Queen's Tower, is still used on the wine labels bottled on the estate. The Serpieri family, who bought the property after King Otto's abdication in 1862, still owns it and runs a dairy farm and a winery there. The single tower gave the castle its name.
The estate lies beside the Antonis Tritsis Metropolitan Park in Ilion, and the Proastiakos station Pyrgos Vasilissis, opened in 2014, stands near the grounds. The Serpieri family still owns and works the property, with a dairy and a winery on site, so access follows the working estate rather than a public museum. The wines bottled here carry the French label "Tour la Reine".
The castle's single tower gives the estate its name: because the neo-Gothic building consists of only one tower, it was called the Queen's Tower. Its design recalls Hohenschwangau Castle in Bavaria, built for Maximilian II, brother of King Otto. The estate passed to the Serpieri family after Otto's abdication in 1862 and remains theirs; a dairy and a winery now operate there, bottling wines as "Tour la Reine".
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