The Art Collectors Villa

 

While I was in Greece, I started paying attention to some of the urban explorers over there, and in a shocking change of pace, actually ended up speaking to one. This human ended up telling me about some villa that I'd never heard of. They were unsure about access, and I got the impression that they were hoping I'd check it out for them and report back. I was heading that way anyway for something else, so I decided to hop the fence and have a mooch. 

 

Recent decades have not been kind to this place. It's been looted, burned, absolutely smothered in graffiti, and then every window and door has been bricked up... Well, almost every window and door. 

But given that it's just a shell of its former self, I actually wasn't impressed at first. To the casual observer it's just a big empty geometric shape. But then I started researching it, and I fell down quite the rabbit hole.

Here's how the building used to look!

 

(Photo credit: Eleni Koutsoudis Iola)

The villa was owned and lived in by a chap called Alexander Iolas, famous in the art world for discovering Andy Warhol. The villa itself was built in stages, starting in the 1950s in what was mostly a barren suburb of Athens, now since engulfed by the city. Iolas allegedly wanted to make an "artists village" where all of his talented friends could be showcased. This led him to make a total of nine land purchases between 1950 and 1957, eventually having enough space for his interests. The locals called this the "House of the Egyptian," what with Iolas coming from Egypt. Some of the older locals called it the "House of the Tuberculosis patient," after a previous building that had stood on the land. Later tabloid papers would call it the "Orgy Palace" but we're getting ahead of ourselves there.

 

 

Outside the main entrance are these cute little gargoyles propping up the pillars with little headless men. The paint on them irritates me somewhat. I don't mind graffiti on a big blank wall, but leave the gargoyles alone. 

 

 

The main entrance is behind them, bricked up and almost completely obscured by the graffiti, but back in the day it was coated in gold. And in typical Iolas fashion, there's a photo of him standing in it.

 

 (Photo credit: Eleni Koutsoudis Iola)

  

It seems Iolas was a big fan of posing with his villa. I've found countless photos of this place in its glory days, and he's in most of them.

 

So for a bit of a background on the guy, his birth name was Konstantinos Koutsoudis, and he was born in Alexandria in 1907. His family were wealthy cotton merchants, but Iolas never really fancied it. He was more interested in the piano but his dad forbade his passion. There's no time for music when one has a cotton empire to run, apparently. But as a teenager, Iolas did befriend the poet, Constantine Cavafy, who was living above a brothel in Alexandria at the time. Cavafy's poems are rather homo-erotic, and Iolas himself was pretty gay too. This was likely a pretty influential friendship, helping Iolas to discover himself while also guiding him down a more artistic road.

 

 

But having said that, I'm not sure how gay Iolas was, nor do I care enough to focus on it for too long. It's only worth bringing up because he would later be engaged to President Roosevelts granddaughter, which is a pretty big deal. But bisexuality wasn't really acknowledged at that point in human history. There's an entire Time magazine cover from 1995 that describes bisexual as a "new sexuality" and everything. So while Iolas was said to be quite flamboyant and unapologetically into sausage, his engagement to Roosevelts granddaughter is often swept under the rug, as if the concept of someone liking men but also being into a woman is something so absurd and against the established narrative that everyone should just pretend it didn't happen. Humans are fucking weird.

 

 

So at seventeen, Iolas ran away from home and traveled to Greece. There he befriended the poet Kostis Palamas and the playwright Angelos Sikelianos, who became mentors of sorts. It was here that he decided that he wanted become a dancer, and he ended up going off to study it in Berlin in 1930, and then in Paris in 1932. While he was quite fond of the underground gay scenes that existed in these cities at the time, he wasn't really one for staying hidden, and he was actually beaten up by members of the Nazi party during his time in Germany. 

Hmm... now that sounds like ominous foreshadowing that maybe the Nazis weren't very tolerant of different kinds of people! I wonder if that story thread ever leads anywhere...

Iolas concluded, somehow, that he'd only be accepted in America, and so headed to New York in 1935. His dancing career was really taking off. He'd performed at the Salzburg Festival, and he'd toured South America with his fiance, Miss Roosevelt. But her family disapproved and their marriage was forbidden. And then a leg injury brought his dancing career to an end too.

But Iolas bounced back. Having befriended the Italian artist Giorgio de Chirico, Iolas decided to become an art dealer. He gained US citizenship in 1945, and changed his name to Alexander Iolas, referencing his birthplace in Egypt and Iolaus of Greek mythology.

 

 

Iolas began opening art galleries around the world, and soon he was mingling with some pretty big names. Jackie Kennedy said that being in New York and not seeing the Iolas gallery was like going to Athens and not seeing the Parthenon, so it's safe to say he was a bit of a hit. He met Andy Warhol walking down the street to his mundane shoe factory job with a portfolio of shoe designs. Iolas took one look at the portfolio and told Warhol that this was his last day designing shoes. Soon Iolas was hosting the very first Andy Warhol exhibition.

But his dream was to establish a place in Greece, and help Greek artists succeed on a global level. He returned to Greece and had this villa built. Not only was it designed to showcase art, but he also wanted his family to live here too. His father is actually the guy who laid the stonework of the garden. The story goes that there was an official developer brought in to do it, but they were faffing and the old man got impatient and did it himself. And as far as gardens go, it's pretty cool.

 

 

The garden was inspired by the Acropolis. Iolas was very adamant that his new home blend in with Athens and all the things that people associate with Greece. Here's how these pillars used to look:

 

(Photo credit: Eleni Koutsoudis Iola)

 

And just for perspective, here's a photo of Alexander Iolas standing next to them. 

(Photo credit: Eleni Koutsoudis Iola)

 

 Also in the garden was this lovely marble seating area.

 

 

It actually looks like it was once a pretty nice chillout spot. 

Iolas also had one of the most bonkers garden decoration I've ever heard of. Alas, it's long gone, but I managed to find an image online. It is a trio of butt pillars.

(Photo credit: Eleni Koutsoudis Iola)

I love that something like this was just in the garden, for any passer-by to see. Maybe 1950s Greece was cool with that sort of thing, but can you imagine this in someones garden in the UK? Every Daily Mail reader on the street would have a cardiac arrest. 

But enough arsing around! Let's slip inside!

(The house, that is.)

 

We'll start in the kitchen, one of the few areas that still retains any resemblance to what it once was. The kitchen actually sits below an apartment intended for the maid of the villa, and it was added in 1972, during the second of three expansions that the villa has undergone. I have found a few old images of the kitchen, one of which was taken following a burglary after the house was vacant. The burglars had allegedly been caught stealing things, and their response to being caught was to burn it all in a kitchen bonfire and run, knowing that eliminating the fire would take priority over chasing them. The image below was taken in the aftermath:  

 

(Photo credit: Eleni Koutsoudis Iola)

That's a lot of ash! But it does bring about a feeling of sadness. It's easy to forget, especially with the buildings that are mostly empty, that these places mattered to someone once. This was someones home. By looking at this mountain of ash, I can get a real sense of dismay that would have been felt at the sight of some former possessions lost forever. There's no retrieving anything from that.

And in addition to that, there are photos taken in the kitchen when Iolas was still living here.

(Photo credit: Eleni Koutsoudis Iola)

It's said that Iolas only lived in a small portion of the house, along with his brother and his niece. The rest of the building was dedicated to showcasing art, and would eventually amass a collection of over 10,000 pieces. It was in the 1970s that Iolas decided to close all of his galleries around the world and move his art collection here. He had dinner with the Greek prime minister Konstantinos Karamanlis, and he'd flat out said to Iolas "You are rich and my country is poor. What can you do about it?" Iolas said to him "I will build you, in Greece, the biggest modern art museum in the world."

His niece, Eleni, had been studying abroad at the time, and returned in 1971 to find her home wrapped in scaffolding as Iola had a whole additional floor attached to the top of the house.

 

 

This is all that remains of the dining room.With so much stripped out of this place, it's nice to see the final remnants of villa furniture scattered around, as well as the big central marble dining room table. The table is made of pentelic marble, from the same quarry as the Acropolis, and I guess it was too heavy for looters to carry.

Naturally I just had to hunt down some old photos of this room!

 

(Photo credit: Eleni Koutsoudis Iola)

 

And of course, there's one with Iolas in it. 

 

(Photo credit: Eleni Koutsoudis Iola)

 

The old kitchen fridge is still here, fire damaged and strictly ornamental from now on.

And there's still loads of old furniture in the cellar, which actually makes a lot of sense. Iolas wanted the bulk of his house to be a museum, and so all of his personal stuff went outside of the public gaze.

However, his flamboyant nature made his wardrobe quite a tourist trap in itself. He had two closets full of furs, and allegedly 3000 eccentric shirts. Visitors would come down to the cellar just to see that shirt collection.

Moving on upstairs...

 

 

So this is where the maid lived. 

 

 

And now onto the best part of any abandoned building, the bathrooms!

 

 

Still in better condition than the toilets in some pubs and clubs.

 

And I'm loving this marble bath. 

Moving on, there's a passageway that leads from the dining room to the main "museum" portion of the villa.

 

We're now in the oldest part of the building, which dates back to the 1950s. There's a bricked up doorway leading outside on the right. And next to that is a small collection of pillar stumps, making this room easily recognisable from the hundreds of vintage images of the villa.

(Photo credit: Eleni Koutsoudis Iola)

Is it me, or does Iolas kinda look like Agent Cooper from Twin Peaks? 

More importantly, wasn't this room gorgeous? Every part of this villa was made into a place where someone could sit and chill, and appreciate the art.

Let's check out the pillars in the corner!

 

It's a staircase leading down into another cellar!

The stairs were quite narrow, and a bit dodgy, but here we are.

 

There's a big trunk in this room, which might have once stored some art work, long since yoinked.  

 

What's interesting is this stairway to nowhere. Given that this is the oldest part of the building, I guess the stairs were blocked off by the numerous extensions that were added over the years.

Moving on back upstairs.

 

This was the bedroom of Alexander Iolas. It's about the same size as my entire apartment. Over on the back walls are the remains of pillars and sculptures, long toppled and smashed. 

 

This room was the final alteration to the villa, built in 1974, when Iolas closed his galleries around the world and opted to only work out of Athens from now on. Prior to this he was allegedly a bit of a nomad, traveling to various galleries and spending time there. The rooms size is disproportionate to his humility. For all the grandeur here, he often slept in his car when he was traveling.  

The size of this room wasn't because he needed a posh spacious place to sleep, but because he wanted the room built specifically to house a certain painting, that being a huge piece by Roberto Matta that covered the entire wall. I actually can't find any images of the artwork, but I have found old photos of this room.

 

(Photo credit: Eleni Koutsoudis Iola)

This room was originally bright green, but with his tastes ever evolving, and also with the fact that he constantly needed a project to do, Iolas had it made into a roman theme in 1983. There's a statue over in the corner there, and in this photo of Iolas, we can get a better look at it.

 

(Photo credit: Eleni Koutsoudis Iola)

And that's pretty cool, because it shows the pillars and statues before they were smashed up. 

Moving on to the museum area...

 

 

Each room was thematic and connected by gold-coated doors. There was a Picasso Room, an Egyptian Room, a Greek Antiquities room, and a Byzantine room. A lot of my own images seem to have gone missing, so I'm sadly stumped on comparison shots, but if one was to stand in the big square archway there, they'd be facing the room below:

 

(Photo credit: Eleni Koutsoudis Iola)

 

 Iolas was described by his loved ones as "restless," in that he couldn't just do nothing. He only went on one holiday with his niece, and he didn't really enjoy it because he was the kind of person who needed to be doing something productive. Consequently this villa, the themes, the decor, and the featured artists were forever in a state of flux. His neice said that the villa was just part of his restless mind. It was his never-ending project.

 

 

He also hated being alone, and craved being the entertainer. His sister Niki would tell him that his friends were all parasites, but he didn't seem to care who he mingled with, as long as they were interesting.

He and Niki weren't particularly fond of each other. She called him a slut, and he said that she was just grumpy because she didn't get invited to parties and lived alone with her maid. These insults, while petty, give us a good insight into each of their respective values. Iolas clearly measures happiness with popularity. 

 

Having said that, his niece often said that he'd get anxious in the build-up to entertaining guests. His hands would shake and he'd be perpetually holding a cigarette. He was a performer really. He'd put on a good front, but the guests didn't see the real him.

 

 

So being a bit of a creative hub, many big names have come to visit this villa over the years. The one who gets mentioned the most is Gianni Versace the fashion designer, who flew to Athens just to have coffee here and then left to fly home just two hours later. 

Rich people are fucking weird. 

Other folks to pass through here are Picasso, Aristotle Onassis, who married President Kennedy's widow, Stavros Niarchos, a billionaire and shipping tycoon, Eliza Goulandris who founded the first Greek Museum of modern art, and the composer Stavros Xarchakos. 

Admittedly aside from Picasso, Versace, and Onassis, I haven't heard of any of these people, but that's really more a reflection of my ignorance than of their lack of significance. 

With the abundance of valuable art here, it wasn't uncommon for Iolas to catch the occasional politician trying to steal stuff either.

 

 

I'm quite fond of this graffiti, but I don't think this is the sort of artwork Iolas had in mind when he set out to make a museum.

 

When it comes to the narrative, the two most notable people to set foot in this villa were Melina Mercouri and Andreas Papandreou. Papandreou was the leader of the Greek Socialist Party, PASOK, and would go on to become prime minister in 1981. Mercouri was an actress whose family had fought in the Greek war of independence. She was thought on quite fondly for keeping her home open to anyone who needed food during Nazi occupation, and even refused to obey members of the SS at a bar, despite being threatened with a gun. She'd helped found PASOK in 1974 and became the minister of culture in 1981. She was pretty vocal about getting Greek marble returned from the British Museum.

 

But Papandreou coming to power really heralded Iolas downward spiral in the media, possibly because he was good friends with Papandreous predecessor. In 1983, Iolas had an interview with Woman Magnazine where he spoke disparagingly about Papandreou and Mercouri, the latter of which he said was coasting off her sex appeal. And I'm no expert, but I don't think it's a good idea to tell a magazine called "Woman" that one of the most successful women in the country is only successful because of her boobs. He really didn't help himself there.

 

The Avriani newspaper, basically Greeces equivalent of The Sun newspaper in the UK, also took an issue with his sexuality and described his villa as some sort of den of depravity. Iolas didn't help matters because he was quite unfiltered, and often spoke to the media about his opinions, seemingly unaware that when the media is out to get you, anything you say will just add fuel to the fire. The media reported that Iolas had said that the Acropolis Parthenon was a bit ridiculous and should be torn down and replaced with something new, although I'm told that this statement was taken wildly out of context to make it look worse than it is. I can't imagine what the original context could possibly be, but I do struggle to match that opinion with an art collector whose garden pays homage to the acropolis.

 

 

 It's time to head upstairs. There are plenty of images online that show what these used to look like.

 

(Photo credit: Eleni Koutsoudis Iola)

 

At the top of the stairs is this old display stand, now decorated with a naked blue graffiti man who has a church for a head. The upstairs area opens up into this vast museum space.

 

So while Iolas promised Karamanlis to make the biggest art museum in Greece, I think he probably failed. But nevertheless this area is still pretty spacious, and looked pretty awesome back in the day.

 

 

And with the curved walls in the centre, it's easy to match with older images. 

 

(Photo credit: Eleni Koutsoudis Iola)

I like this. It's some sort of quirky metal sculpture display with fish, birds and a massive cock. 

 

(Photo credit: Eleni Koutsoudis Iola)

This shot was apparently taken in this spacious area, although I've not been able to match the angle. I'm including it anyway because I just love the vibe of the image. It has these two chilling out in the foreground, surrounded by art.

 

In the 1980s Iolas ended up contracting AIDs, although I've heard conflicting information about this. Some sources say that it was because of his lifestyle, while the villa caretaker says that he contracted it from a bypass surgery. The caretaker also says that nobody knew he had it until he died of it, while other sources say that it was really taking its toll on his mental health. His caretaker does note that towards the end, Iolas was more interested in platonic love rather than sex, which would indicate that he knew something was wrong. 

But if having an incurable killer illness wasn't bad enough, things were about to get much worse. A chap called Antonis Nikolaou began working at the villa. Some say he was a dancer, some say he was a wardrobe manager, and some say that he was a lover. I guess it's entirely possible that he was all three. Iolas had somehow acquired the entire wardrobe of the deceased opera singer, Maria Kallas, and since Antonis was the same size, he sort of appropriated all of the clothes and adopted Maria Kallas as his new identity. I'm not sure if Antonis/Maria was transgender or transvestite. Media from back then seems to go with Transvestite, but they aren't going to know what transgender people are. They're still a decade away from figuring out that bisexuals exist.

But male or female, "Maria" turned out to be a massive cunt. After being caught yoinking a few valuables, she was no longer welcome in the Iolas household, and she responded to the news by having loud drunk tantrums on the street outside late into the night and threatening to release sexual photos of him, before finally going to the media with slanderous accusations.

 

 

Maria told the media that Iolas had illegally acquired all of the artwork in his home, and also that he was guilty of drugs, prostitution, orgies, and sexual activity with children. The media quickly pounced on the allegation that children were involved in orgies at the villa, although it seems that no victims were actually identified to verify the claims. It was all empty really, but Iolas had pissed off the prime minister, Papandreou, and he was already scandalous just by being gay in the 1980s, so the media was absolutely going to run with it. The newspapers in Greek are a little more brutal than they are in the UK, so the villa was branded "The Orgy Palace" while Iolas himself was called "Lover of Slavery," "Enemy of Politics," "Pro-American, " "fascist," and "the Hitler of Sex."

And, obviously this was all very bad for Iolas but I can't help but laugh at that last one. I would love it if my local rag named me the Hitler of Sex. I would actually pay the Shropshire Star to run that article. That's hilarious.

 

There was some international attempt to defend him, spearheaded by the film director Costas Gavras, and this did include some very big names. Andy Warhol himself was going to do a version of The Last Supper with Judas seat empty, because Judas was the people of Greece. It's no wonder really that Iolas ended up packing up and moving to America, where he died in New York in June 1987. Some say it's the AIDs that killed him. Some say that he died during prostate surgery. But given that AIDs really just negates the immune system, it's entirely possible that Iolas death was caused by both these things.

 

 

In his will, Iolas allegedly left his villa and its art to the Greek state, but only on the condition that his name be restored. For the minister of culture, this was a great opportunity to open a huge museum with really valuable art for the people of Athens to enjoy. Unfortunately for the people of Athens, the minister of culture was Melina Mercouri, and she was still bitter about Iolas earlier comments.

Interestingly despite that being the official story, Eleni the neice says that he hated the public sector and would never do something like that. He had attempted to sell the villa to a shah in Persia, and he had allegedly given a few pieces of art to some private museums but been annoyed that they'd just been put into storage in the basement. Perhaps he did hate the public sector, but the media hate was making him desperate.

 

 

Here we have the library at the very back of the upper floor. It was named the White Library by Iolas, because every book had a white cover. It also had a unique chair made out of antlers. There are numerous photos of this room online.

 

(Photo credit: Eleni Koutsoudis Iola)

 

 

 

And we'll end on a high note, the bathrooms. I actually have found a photo of this bathroom prior to the place getting abandoned, and it's sexy as fuck.

 

(Photo credit: Eleni Koutsoudis Iola)

 Isn't that amazing? That black thing in the foreground is a bin shaped like a frog with the lid being its open mouth.

There are a few more bathrooms up here.

 

Absolutely in better condition than the toilets in some pubs and clubs.

 

With Iolas dead, a guarantor was appointed to protect the property, but he didn't do a very good job. Over the next few years, there were numerous break-ins and arson attacks. The vast majority of art was stolen, some being found in the home of Niki, the bitter sister, and others being found in shipping company warehouses. Some has curiously found its way into the hands of politicians. A lot of it was set on fire and lost forever. Over the next few years the villa was completely ransacked until it was just a shell.  

 

Iolas did have his name cleared, when documentation was provided to prove that he had obtained the artwork legally. But it's all too little too late. The tabloid newspapers had ruined the final years of his life. 

And ever since then there's been something of a legal tiff. There are those who want to turn the villa into a cultural hub, and redeem his name, but there's a lot of legal mumbojumbo getting in the way, all of which could be hastened if the powers-that-be weren't being so difficult. 

His neice Eleni has inherited what was left of the art collection, alongside her cousin, Sylvia, who is Niki's daughter. Sylvia doesn't give a shit, probably because of all that sibling bickering between Iolas and Niki. But Eleni has managed to obtain a small percentage of what was once a huge collection. The rest, whether destroyed or illegally procured, seems to be lost forever.

 

Eleni says that she'll never come back here. Her last visit was in 1987, and she wants to remember it as it was, not what it has become.

 

But on the bright side, as of 2023 there are now plans underway to turn this into a cultural centre. The rooms downstairs will be a museum, while the dining room will be a conference room. The kitchen will be used for refreshments. The big bedroom will become office spaces, and the large hall upstairs will be a multi-purpose hall for events and cinema. The library will remain a library.

So who knows? Maybe when I return to Athens I'll return to the villa and find it completely restored. Maybe I'll be able to take photos for comparison shots of my own photos. 

But for now that's all I've got. My next blogs will be some sort of vehicle graveyard and then I'm heading back to the west midlands to cover one of those old cave dwellings that were bizarrely still in use around the 1960s. In order to increase your chances of keeping updated with the blog, as well as gamble your luck against an algorithmic hellscape, follow my social media! Instagram and Facebook are begrudgingly where I'm the most active, but you can also find me on Vero, Reddit, Threads and Twitter for some reason. 

Thanks for reading!