Kypseli Municipal Market.

Alexandros Metaxas built it in 1937, at the point where Athenian Modernism was the city's working language rather than its heritage. A market hall on the Fokionos Negri walkway in Kypseli — clean lines, generous light, a civic building that took its ordinary job seriously. For decades it did that job, then it stopped. The market closed in 2003 and sat empty.

Listed as a preserved building in 2005, it could easily have been restored into a museum of itself — a beautiful shell, a plaque, a locked door. Instead it reopened in 2018 on a different premise. Run with Impact Hub Athens and the city's Technopolis, it came back as a working market organised around social economy: cooperatives, associations and small enterprises under one listed roof, rather than retail chasing the highest rent.

What's inside is a mix the model makes possible — small food producers, craft and design workshops, a cafe — alongside a year-round programme that uses the hall as a public room: exhibitions, book swaps, workshops, concerts, theatre. A permanent display, Voices | Stories | People, keeps the market's own history in the building it belongs to.

The surest sign a neighbourhood is being taken seriously: its market comes back as a market, not as a photograph of one.

Entry is free, Monday to Saturday through the day and Sunday afternoons. Come for a specific maker or a listed event, or come to see what a restored civic building looks like when the restoration includes the people. It sits on Fokionos Negri, the pedestrian spine of Kypseli — the walk there is half the point.