10th part of Drama cultural routes - VENIZELOS STREET - Greece

10th part of Drama cultural routes - VENIZELOS STREET

2500 YEARS OF HISTORY IN ONE HOUR

Drama Cultural Route

Drama municipality

Drama Old Town

Drama municipality

Drama Old Town

Culture Centre_Elepherias

Drama municipality

Culture Centre_Elepherias

Drama Municipality

Classical Building in Drama

Drama municipality

View of Drama

10th part of Drama cultural routes - VENIZELOS STREET

VENIZELOS STREET has always been a landmark of Drama, because until the 1960s it was its most central and commercial street. It can be said that the town was originally built around this street, which started at the East gate of the Byzantine town and ended on the West side. It was a kind of “decumanus maximus” (main artery). This is where most of the town’s inns, restaurants, hotels, cafés, taverns and cinemas were situated. The “Central Hotel”, built in 1910, was a neoclassical two-storey building used in 1901 as post office, between 1941 and 1944 as a clubhouse by the Bulgarian occupants, and as a refugee shelter during the Civil War period. This is where the people of Drama would go strolling and where all the public events (25th March parade, the procession of the icon of Hagia Varvara, etc.) used to take place. Until 1920 Venizelos Street was paved with river stones and later with cobblestones. Nowadays quite a few abandoned shops line this street and, even though Venizelos Street has lost its previous sovereignty, it has kept its original appearance and aura of history.