Tourist Attraction in Athens:
National Theater of Greece
The National Theater of Greece is located in Athens. The theater was founded in 1880 with a fund set up by King Giorgio I and Efstratios Rallis to create a permanent venue for a national theater in the capital. The foundations for this new project were thrown on the road dedicated to Agiou Konstantinou and the building was designed by the famous Saxon architect known to many other public buildings in Athens, Ernst Ziller. Despite the problems, the building was finished in time, completed in 1890 and in 1900 Vlachos Angelos was appointed director. It was built between 1895 and 1901. The national theater began expanding its activities and in 1901 a theater school was opened. That same year, the Royal Theater opened its doors to the public with a monologue drawn by Dimitris Verardakis and two Greek comedies, including Pericle's death. After the first performance, the theater began to expand, growing in popularity among Greece's middle-class classes, and more productions were staged. One of the most famous of the period was Orestea of Aeschylus, staged in prose by Yorgos Sotiriadis. This production aroused a long conflict on language, until when a classical professor, Yorgos Mistrioti, persuaded his students, the philosophy of the University of Athens, to march to the theater in an attempt to stop the execution . The events that followed provoked a dead and ten wounded on November 8, 1903. The Royal Theater occupied the historic Neoclassical building in Agiou Konstantinou from 1901 to 1908, but failed and was forced to close. In 1913, after the assassination of King George I of Greece, the Royal Theater was left to his son, Prince Nicola of Greece and Denmark, who was a painter and playwright. The theater enters a period of decline so much that it hosted foreign drama companies until 1932. It was closed until it was decided to reopen through a Parliamentary law signed by Education Minister Giorgos Papandreou on May 30 1932. Since 1932 the building has been home to the National Theater of the National. In 2009, complete renovation of the building was completed.