Papagou and Cholargos

The municipality of Papagou-Cholargos was formed in 2011 from the two former municipalities, with its seat at Cholargos. At the 2021 census Cholargos had 31 304 residents and Papagou 13 962. Both towns, by the municipality's own account, grew out of building cooperatives that planned garden suburbs (plots larger than the usual city plot, and plenty of public and green spaces), and both lie against the slopes of Hymettus.

Cholargos borrowed its name from the ancient deme (a local district of Attica) of Pericles, who was known as Cholargeus, although later research based on inscriptions suggests that the deme may have lain west of the Kifisos. The modern town began with the Agropoleon company, founded in 1926, and its final plan of 1928 divided fields, vineyards and pine wood into a hundred blocks, with a market square, sites for a church and schools, a town hall and a central grove. The domed basilica of Panagia Faneromeni (begun in 1962) now stands on the church site.

During the occupation an Italian unit made its headquarters in the Saligaros villa (building stopped when the Germans followed), and after the liberation the first shops opened around what is now Plateia Dimokratias. The real growth came after 1960: Cholargos had 2775 residents in 1951 and 31 703 in 1981, as the rules came to allow five storeys and antiparochi (a plot handed to a builder in exchange for some of the flats) replaced many of the old villas with apartment blocks. In 2004 a statue of Pericles by Georgios Kalakallas was set up where Perikleous Avenue leaves Mesogeion.

Papagou, which belonged to Cholargos until 1965, is younger, and it was built for one profession. The Autonomous Building Organisation of Officers (ΑΟΟΑ), set up by law in 1950 to house officers of the three armed services, began its first house in early 1952 and on 22 June 1954 allotted its first 200 houses by lot. The estate took the name of Alexandros Papagos, the marshal who as commander-in-chief had pressed for a law giving officers homes of their own.

The organisation also built the roads, squares and groves and acted as the planning authority, so the town is evidently of a piece: 1395 houses went up between 1953 and 1969, and 66 blocks with 833 flats followed between 1975 and 1980. A third of the streets and squares (39 of 117, by the municipality's count) carry the names of officers who fell in Greece's wars, rows of trees line the well-planned streets, and the Great Park, named after the marshal, lies near the middle of the town.

The Ministry of National Defence has its headquarters in the Papagos camp, known as the Pentagon, on Mesogeion Avenue where Papagou meets the municipality of Athens, and an equestrian statue of the marshal (by Iraklis Xanthopoulos), put up in 2000, faces it across the avenue. Mesogeion itself runs for some 8 km, from Vasilissis Sofias Avenue to the Hymettus ring road, and it links Cholargos with central Athens, whereas the town's own central avenue is Perikleous.

Line 3 of the metro, run by STASY, has two stations here: Ethniki Amyna (the name means national defence), the end of the line when it opened in 2000, and Cholargos (signed Holargos), added in 2010. From both, trains run through Syntagma and Monastiraki to Piraeus, and in the other direction some go on beyond Doukissis Plakentias to the airport. OASA buses run circular routes from Ethniki Amyna station into both towns (the 409 to Papagou, the 416 and 418 to Cholargos), whereas the tram does not come this way at all.

The Hymettus ring road (the A62) passes south-east of Papagou and links the area with the Attiki Odos and East Attica, and it is also part of the trouble. Traffic presses on Papagou from several sides (two ministries, the vehicle testing centre, the Gennimatas hospital and the ring road's Papagou junction), drivers tend to use its narrow streets as a short cut to Katechaki Avenue, and Cholargos lacks avenues along its eastern and western sides. Parking is a problem too, by the municipality's own account, and in October 2026 it put a revised controlled parking scheme around Mesogeion out for consultation again (until 30 October), proposing 1832 places for residents.

Hymettus is close to both towns, the municipality notes. The range runs for some 16 km (its summit, Evzonas, reaches 1026 m) and belongs to the EU's Natura 2000 network, and on its slopes between Cholargos and Papagou stands the monastery of Agios Ioannis Theologos (St John the Theologian), which still has a monastic community. The association of twelve municipalities that protects Hymettus (ΣΠΑΥ) lists walks that start from Papagou, among them loops around Agios Ioannis Theologos, with views over Athens and the Saronic Gulf, and routes on to the Tristrato of Agia Paraskevi and the Lion's Cave. The mountain likely explains the cooler air as well, since cold air flows down its slopes and keeps Cholargos cooler than most of Athens.

Papagou is still, by the Greek Wikipedia's account, a place of relatively low building density, with many detached houses of the 1960s and 1970s, although apartment blocks seem lately to be taking the place of the old houses. Cholargos is denser, built up with the blocks of the antiparochi decades. The 1928 plan nevertheless kept its public and green spaces, and the municipality describes Cholargos as a place that has kept the feel of a neighbourhood, home to people of middle and higher incomes and, for many years, to artists and writers. For a buyer the housing seems to follow this history closely, from Papagou's detached houses and its blocks of 1975 to 1980 to the flats of the antiparochi decades in Cholargos.