Makrygianni
Melissinos Art.
Art on your feet
The son of Stavros Melissinos — Athens’ Poet Sandalmaker — now runs this tiny workshop on Tzireon in Makrygianni. Sandals made to order in twenty minutes, by hand, from classical Greek patterns unchanged since the 1950s.
Stavros Melissinos opened his sandal workshop in the postwar years and became, over the following decades, one of the more improbable cultural phenomena in Athens. His clients included The Beatles — who visited in 1967 — Sophia Loren, Anthony Quinn, and Peter O’Toole. He was also a poet. The name that stuck was the Poet Sandalmaker of Athens.
His son Pantelis now runs the workshop on Tzireon, a short street in Makrygianni below the Acropolis. The sandals are made by hand to order: customers choose the style, the sole weight, the strap configuration. The designs draw from classical Greek footwear and have not changed dramatically since the 1950s. This is not considered a problem.
The Beatles came in 1967. The patterns haven’t changed since.
A pair typically takes twenty minutes to make while you wait. The shop is genuinely small — Pantelis and a workbench, essentially — and the photographs on the wall document most of the celebrated visitors. The sandals wear well for years. Prices are reasonable.
1920
Year
