Explore Villa Clio

Built around 1930 on Halkidiki Street, the former Vagianos Clinic as it is known. This building on 50 Halkidiki Street was the house of doctor Vayanos with the clinic on the other side of the plot, on Thermopylae Street, which clinic has already been sold, has been demolished and a modern building has grown in its place.

The architect of the building with a passion for his own house, Andreas Vayanos himself, who has first studied architecture and then medicine. It is built according to the architectural trend of eclecticism that dominated Thessaloniki in the early 20th century. This architectural movement combined elements from different architectural styles, but used them in such a way that the resulting whole was unified. It is an elegant work of art, a listed building that expresses the richness of Greece’s cultural heritage. It is a building with a special architectural, folklore, social and aesthetic character and value.

The doctor and architect Andreas Vayanos, who studied first as an architect and later as a doctor, came to Greece with the Bolshevik Revolution and the events preceding and accompanying the fall of the Tsar in Russia. Starting from a wealthy family in Yalta, having in his baggage a rich ancestry and studies as an architect and doctor , he settles permanently in Greece as a safe haven. He marries Cleo, who comes from the island of Symi. His wife’s studies were reportedly in Vienna in music and piano.  From the objects used and left in the building one can tell that they were people who loved books and simplicity. From 1934 when the building was built until their death they lived in this house. For some time in the old days the ground floor of the building housed the offices of the clinic which was located in the other part of the then single plot of land , on Thermopylae Street.

In honor of the first and last tenant of this house, we named the villa CLIO with great respect to her. On the main front door of the building on Halkidiki Street , one can distinguish in the elaborate plasterwork around the front door the initials A on one side and B on the other, the initials of the name Andreas Vayanos. The building became known as the Vayanos Clinic , but there was always his house on the first floor initially , and throughout the building when the clinic stopped operating.