The Athens College was founded in 1925 to educate Greece’s future leaders in a new way. With American influence, rigorous entrance exams, a boarding school, a scholarship fund, enlightened people and a new curriculum that encourages critical thinking. To educate the finest young Greeks from every corner of the world, endowed with physical vigour and moral fortitude. To turn them into cosmopolitans, yet with a deep love for their homeland. The Athens College initially achieved its purpose. It helped Greece greatly. For many decades, it produced numerous capable leaders: five prime ministers, distinguished businesspeople, and prominent figures in literature and the arts.
What is the situation today, a century on? Through dozens of interviews and systematic research spanning more than three years in archives in Greece and America, this unofficial history of the Athens College and, above all, of its mission has emerged.
With rare photographic material from the College’s archives, key introductory notes by Moses Raphael and Nikiforos Diamantouros, primary interview material and the findings of many years of meticulous research, Giorgos Nikolopoulos’s book is a unique testament to the history of this historic institution and to modern Greek education in general.
- Pages: 448
- ISBN: 978-960-572-783-3
- Publication: 2025
- Date of publication: 10/11/2025
- Dimensions: 17 x 24 εκ.
- Categories: Books, Humanities & Social Sciences, Essays & Thought, Ιστορία, Δοκίμιο, Μελέτη
"μια ιστορική μελέτη με πλήθος στοιχείων που, είτε ανασύρονται για πρώτη φορά από την αφάνεια είτε συνδυάζουν με καινοφανή τρόπο, είναι μια ολοκληρωμένη αλλά και κριτική βιογραφία του Κολλεγίου, μια και ο συγγραφέας δεν διστάζει να στηλιτεύσει τα σφάλματα και τις εσωτερικές έριδες των εκάστοτε διοικούντων."
– Βασίλης Τσακίρογλου, Πρώτο Θέμα"Μέσα από δεκάδες συνεντεύξεις με ανθρώπους που συνδέθηκαν με αυτό αλλά και πολύχρονη αναζήτηση σε αρχεία σκιαγραφείται το προφίλ ενός εκπαιδευτικού ιδρύματος-συμβόλου, στο οποίο φοίτησαν πέντε Έλληνες πρωθυπουργοί· τι υπήρξε, τι φιλοδοξούσε να προσφέρει αλλά και τι συμβαίνει σήμερα, έναν αιώνα μετά την ίδρυσή του."
– Γιώργος Ρομπόλας, Περιοδικό Κ
George Nikolopoulos
George Nikolopoulos was born in Athens in 1977. He graduated from Athens College in 1994. He studied law at the University of Athens, the University of Warwick and the London School of Economics and Political Science, receiving an award for academic excellence. He served as a trainee at the US House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs. A member of the ESIEA, he served as editor-in-chief of the investigative journalism programme ‘Ereuna’ with Pavlos Tsimas, undertaking assignments in Iraq, Russia, America and Turkey. He was also a columnist for Stavros Theodorakis’s Protagon. Together with his schoolmate, Eleni Potamianou, whom he has known since the second year of sixth form, they are the parents of Nikolaos ’23, Andreas ’24 and Daphne ’26.
