Α historic and well-known residence in Athens’ old-quarter district of Plaka, which served as the backdrop of a very popular 1965 movie comedy indelibly linked with Greek cinema’s “golden age”, will be restored and renovated to operate as a space for Greek-language film screenings.
The decision by the culture ministry to restore the “Kokovikos House”, named after the fictional couple of the movie “And the Wife Shall Revere Her Husband (Η γυνή να φοβήται τον άνδρα / ee Ghin-EE Na Fo-VEE-te ton AN-dra) will be funded to tune of 1.7 million euros, derived from local and Community framework resources managed by the Attica local regional government.
The three-and-a-half-storey residence is located on 32, Tripodon St. in Plaka, the quarter that lies off the north side of the Acropolis in central Athens. According to research and documentation, the building is dated to roughly 1800, which would mean it was erected during the last phase of the Ottoman occupation of Athens prior to the Greek War of Independence in 1821.
Scholarly work has shown that its first occupant was a Haci Halil Efendi, an Ottoman “Şeyhülislam”, a top religious leader meaning “elder of Islam”, who when summoned to the imperial capital of Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul) to issue a religious ruling allowing for the slaughter of non-combatant Greek Christians because of the uprising, refused the Sultan’s order and was exiled to his death. It later served as quarters for a besieged Ottoman garrison.
The building is considered an example of the “Athenian style” of popular architecture of the late Ottoman and early post-independence period, and before the Neoclassical trend emerged and dominated as modern Greece’s national style and preference.
The 1965 bitter-sweet comedy, directed by Giorgos Tzavellas, starring Giorgos Konstantinou and Maro Kontou, was a box office hit (nearly 300,000 tickets and 13th out of 95 domestically produced films for the year) when it premiered, although its popularity with Greek audiences, through numerous annual television reruns, has surged over the subsequent decades and turned it into a pop culture favorite.
