Description

The Official name of the building is: “Agios Nikolaos Passenger Station” and is a property of the Piraeus port organization. The construction was decided at the end of 1950’s, due to the interest of bigger cruise ships, visiting Athens and Greece. Moreover Piraeus was the port that thousand Greeks used to immigrate abroad for a better life.

Winners of the architectural contest of 1962 for the design of the passengers station were the architects Ioannis Liapis and Ilias Skroumbelos. The building size is monumental, 185 meters length and 51 meters width. The innovative roof reminds a “sailing mast”, but the people named it “Pagoda” which refers to the temples of Far East.

The inauguration took place on September of 1967, when both the regime and the face of transportation had changed. In 1976 the abandoned building hosted “Posidonia”, the first big exhibition for Shipping that took place in our country. The building identified itself with that important term till 1984, since the next year “Posidonia” was hosted by other centers far from the port. The building before closing on 2004, used to host other exhibitions from time to time. In 2013 it was decided that is a Monument of Modern Greece since the stage is a trademark of the area nearby.