Summary
Theocharidis Ploutarchos & Mamaloukos Stavros, The Complex of the Old Athonias Academy in the Context of the 18th Century Athonite Architecture
The Athonias Academy, the fulfilment oflong-cherished hopes and dreams that a model, pioneering School of higher education with an innovative, radical curriculum might be established in the Greek world, was founded on Mount Athos in 17 49 and operated in facilities provided by the Monastery of Vatopedi on a hill next to its monastic complex. A few years later, at the peak of its success, under the direction of the renowned Evgenios Voulgaris, the Academy had about two hundred students, despite the fact that the building complex had not been completed. Unfortunately, however, the School soon began to lose its lustre and declined, a process that eventually led to its dissolution several decades later, despite the attempts made by Vatopedi Monastery to preserve and revive it.
The construction of the Academy's building complex begun shortly before 1750. It had two main construction phases, the second and largest of which, though the result of a unified conception, was carried out in stages up until the year 1785. In plan, the complex takes the form of a rectangular parallelogram measuring approx. 70x40 m. It consists of four wings arranged around a spacious courtyard. Roughly in the middle of the western section of the courtyard stands the chapel of the Prophet Elijah, which predates the School -a typical Athonite chapel of the compressed cross-in-s"quare type with a drumless dome and a narthex of later date. Each wing consisted of a series of rooms arranged along a wide corridor. The main entrance to the complex lies in the east wing, while there is also a second entrance in the west wing. To the east of the complex stands the 140 metre-long aqueduct that forms part of the School's water supply.
The building complex of the Athonite Academy constitutes a unique monument in the modern history of both Mount Athos and the Greek world in general. The exceptional importance of the complex, in terms of the history of both Athonite and, more generally, modern Greek architecture, has to do with both the size and the quality of its design and construction, which makes it an invaluable source for the study of both building construction on Athos in the 18th century and also the architecture of the few (and also little-known) School buildings dating from the Pre-Revolutionary Period (1821).
