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History of the Bank's buildings
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Head Office
A landmark building exuding a sense of stability and trust.
During the first ten years of its operation (1928-1938), the Bank of Greece relied on infrastructure of the National Bank of Greece (NBG), including for its functional, housing and staffing needs. It was housed in a building belonging to the National Mortgage Bank at 28 Eleftheriou Venizelou (Panepistimiou) Street until moving to its own premises in 1938.
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Subsequent extensions to the original building
By the late 1930s, ten years after its establishment, the Bank had a staff of over 2,000 (in his “Chronicle of the Bank of Greece”, Ilias Venezis places the exact number at 2,061: 1,714 men and 347 womennotes), while its operations kept expanding. Thus, even before the head office was inaugurated in 1938, there had already been talk of its extension.
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Building on Amerikis Street
The building was inaugurated on 28 January 2004. Designed by Alexandros Tombazis and Associates, its construction was overseen by the Bank’s Technical Service. With austere and formal lines, the design is essentially modern, but at the same time remains faithful to the classical style discernible in most of the Bank’s buildings. As Tombazis himself noted, the concept design was guided by an attempt to manage “a transition from the high scale of Panepistimiou Street to the lower scale of the two listed two-storey neoclassical buildings on Stadiou Street”. The building consists of six underground levels, a two-level ground floor and eight upper floors, with a total area of 13,279 m².
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IT Premises
The Bank’s IT Premises were the first in Greece to be built for purpose and thus, by design, to meet all relevant security and functional requirements. The design study was assigned in 1977 to M. Sifaki-Kalogrouli firm, with M. Sangermano-Lymperopoulou and K. Hatzidimitriou-Stathopoulou as associate architects and E. Vourekas as consultant.
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Bank of Greece Printing Works (National Mint/ IETA)
The Bank was still a young institution when its administration began to entertain the idea of having in-house printing works, appropriately staffed and equipped to undertake the production of banknotes and securities. The advantages would be manifold: enhanced security and protection against counterfeiting; for the Bank, greater self-reliance and responsiveness to issuing needs; for the Greek State, cost-efficient and secure printing services for its official documents; and for the country, saving on foreign exchange as production would pass to Greek hands.
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Athens Cash Processing and Distribution Centre
2005 saw a new addition to the list of the Bank’s premises: the Athens Cash Processing and Distribution Centre, constructed on the grounds of the IETA compound in Halandri. It is a distinct building ensemble based on a complex spatial programme and designed to meet high security specifications and modern aesthetic standards.
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Thessaloniki Cash Processing and Distribution Centre
With Greece’s entry into Economic and Monetary Union and the participation of the Bank of Greece in the Eurosystem, the need arose to modernise and upgrade the Bank’s cash storage, processing and distribution facilities in Athens and Thessaloniki.
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The Thessaloniki Branch building
The classically-styled building of the Bank’s Thessaloniki branch, situated at the corner of Tsimiski and I. Dragoumi Streets, is one of the city’s most important neoclassical monuments, thanks to its architectural merit and prominent location. The plot had originally been earmarked for a branch of the National Bank of Greece (NBG) in 1922 (as part of the city’s reconstruction plans by the French urban planner Ernest Hébrard in the aftermath of the great fire of 1917).
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Regional Branches
The regional branches of the Bank of Greece have always played a significant role in the local economy and society. Moreover, the buildings in which they are housed have become landmarks of the respective cities, providing a sense of local identity and architectural heritage and serving as invaluable tokens of historical memory and testimony of cultural change.
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