Awarded Best of November Winner by the international platform Street Art Cities, a monumental new mural on Aristomenous Street in Kalamata, Greece, has instantly become a cultural landmark—marking the first time a Greek work has received this distinction.

Stretching across the façade of a multi-storey building in the heart of the Peloponnese city, the mural portrays the legendary Greek diva Maria Callas, transforming the urban landscape into a living canvas of memory and identity. The work bears the signature of visual artist Kleomenis Kostopoulos (Kle) and stands out for its exquisite detail, chromatic harmony and lyrical sensibility. Callas’s gaze is not merely depicted—it seems to converse with the city and its people.

Alongside its recent accolade, the mural has also been selected to compete again in January at the Best of 2025 Awards, reaffirming its international resonance and its place on the global map of contemporary street art.

In the very center of Kalamata, Kostopoulos turns an entire building façade into a tribute to place, nature and cultural heritage. The figure of Maria Callas—the greatest opera diva of all time, whose father hailed from the region—is rendered with elegance and surrounded by branches, fruits and birds. These natural motifs carry symbolic weight, evoking the vitality of Messinia, the ideas of continuity and renewal, and the deep, almost organic bond between people and their land.

The artist’s visual language—contemporary, evocative and rich in associations—infuses the cityscape with color and imagination, inviting passersby to pause, look up and reconnect with their surroundings. As artistic director of ArtWalk and founder of Art in Progress, Kostopoulos has long championed the power of public art to shape cultural identity and spark dialogue within urban spaces.

This mural is more than an impressive large-scale artwork. It functions as a new landmark for Kalamata and a point of reference for contemporary Greek urban art, with its international recognition underscoring how street art can unite communities across borders.

Informally titled “Kalamata,” the mural is not just an image. It is an invitation—to look up, to feel, and to remember.