It didn’t shut once during the German Occupation and is now closing down
The difference is that the closure of this store on the corner of Stadiοu and Kolokotroni str, is like tearing a page off the book of this city’s history.
But let’s take things from the beginning and travel back two centuries in 1886 when Nikolas Nissiotis, a successful silversmith of the time, decides to leave Pringipos and Constantinople and come to Athens. A few years later, the craftsman opens a shop on Kolokotroni str, behind the building of the then-parliament. It's 1899 and "Nissiotis Silverware" is housed in one of the most central buildings of the capital. Ilion Palace, one of the first hotels in Athens, is dominant above the store, which socialites frequented for drinks, and the ladies would visit the ground floor to admire the masterpieces of the craftsman of silver from Asia Minor.
Over the years, the store became a symbol for the capital's commercial market. "In 1913, Nikolas Nissiotis' was the first Athens store to install crystal doors and an inside elevator, which becomes the subject of discussions around the center", says the last owner of the business, Mara Nissiotis, to protothema.gr.
Photographs by Petros Poulidis’ collection, now belonging to the ERT digital archive, show Nissiotis’ sign on Kolokotroni str at the beginning of the last century, when horse-drawn wagons were still circulating in Athens. The company had already been passed on to his son Leonidas who, following in the footsteps of his father, continued the tradition of keeping the company at the top of the Athenian commercial elite. During Leonidas Nissiotis' time, the store would come to employ 35 people, a record for the era, and the company would provide shelter for many refugees from Asia Minor, who came to Athens after the disaster of ’22.
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