Modern times: a forest planted again

The modern history of Hymettus is a story of loss and repair. The green that Athenians see on the northern slopes today was not always there.

The first plantings. According to the Philodasiki Enosi Athinon (Athens Reforestation Society), it was already working on a forest at Kaisariani in 1924. It persuaded the government of the day to declare most of the area a reforestation zone and, with the Ministry of Military Affairs, planted pines and cypresses beside Kaisariani Avenue.

The refugees. Kaisariani was born out of the Asia Minor Catastrophe. From the spring of 1923, refugees from the coast of Asia Minor settled hastily in conical army tents on the eastern side of central Athens, near the Syngros Hospital for Infectious Diseases. In 1934 Kaisariani split from the Municipality of Athens and became a municipality of its own. Vyronas also became an independent municipality in 1934, with the Asia Minor doctor Nikolaos Frangiadis as its first mayor. Karea was settled in large numbers from 1957 or 1958, at first by Armenian, Greek-Romanian and Pontic Greek refugees.

The Occupation. By the same organisation's account, the occupiers stripped the mountain and later residents of the surrounding settlements cut trees for fuel. In her book "Ymittos", Dido Kalleri writes that only the private Nastos forest, to the right of Karea, survived.

The Shooting Range of Kaisariani. In Kaisariani the Germans chose the Shooting Range as a place of execution for resistance fighters. The first execution took place on Tuesday, 26 May 1942, and the executions stopped in October 1944. On May Day 1944, 200 patriots, communists, were executed. In total, according to the Municipality of Kaisariani, about 700 fighters were executed at the Shooting Range. The municipality's own pages do not fully agree on one smaller figure for 1944 (440 and "over 400"), so we give only the overall total.

Hymettus in 1944. The Municipality of Kaisariani writes that Kaisariani belonged to the First Brigade, which covered the area from Goudi to Glyfada, "the whole brow of Hymettus". For December 1944 the same source describes fighters climbing Hymettus in a thick snowstorm. This is the municipality's narrative and was not cross-checked.

Reforestation from 1945. After the war, at the urging of its president Kaiti Argyropoulou, the Society began reforesting in Kaisariani and Vyronas. Other associations, the Hellenic Mountaineering Club, scouts and guides also helped. The area was declared an "Aesthetic Forest" by Presidential Decree 91/74. The Hellenic Ornithological Society confirms that the Aleppo pine forest in the northern part grew after the Second World War thanks to the Kaisariani reforestation.

Pressures and fires. The Society reports that during the dictatorship about 680 stremmata (roughly 68 hectares) were expropriated for the university campus, and that the Alimou-Katechaki avenue sacrificed another part. The July 1988 fire, which started at Kalopoula, burned 700 stremmata, and the July 2007 fire another 250 in the Koutalades area. After 1988 the Society built water tanks and fire lookouts.

The monastery in modern times. Kaisariani Monastery ceased to function in 1833, when the Regency of King Otto dissolved the men's monasteries with fewer than six monks. The Philodasiki Enosi Athinon restored the complex between 1952 and 1955, in cooperation with the Archaeological Service.

Protection today. According to the Ornithological Society, Hymettus is an Important Bird Area (GR126) and part of the Site of Community Importance GR3000006 (Hymettus, Kaisariani Aesthetic Forest, Vouliagmeni lake). It names fires, construction on the fringes, road building and illegal hunting as the main threats. The Hymettus Protection and Development Association (ΣΠΑΥ) presents itself as an association of 12 neighbouring municipalities with five lines of action, and its website mentions a Memorandum of Cooperation with the National Observatory of Athens for a fire-weather station.