A new skatepark in Elefsina from the Onassis Foundation

Photo: Panos Kefalos

An industrial city throughout the ages, Elefsina is evolving and renewing itself, while the new generations of people living now in Elefsina are invited to enjoy the area’s outdoor courts in every possible manner. The public space is transformed into something vibrant. The new skatepark features a wonderful big bowl, with lighting and nice curved walls for all those who already know or want to learn how to skate, in an awesome location by the invited graffiti artist GERA 1, adding a colorful note to the park. This donation also includes two quarter pipes as well as a straight rail.

Photo: Dimitris Michalakis

The skatepark in Elefsina

Everyday life is changing in the city. As part of the OnAthens initiative, the Onassis Foundation collaborates with the Municipality of Elefsina in the renovation, redevelopment, and facilities creation, with the aim of improving the life quality of the new generation of city residents. Following the completion of the upgrading of the sports facilities in Elefsina with six state-of-the-art courts, the skatepark takes turns.

An idea of the Onassis Foundation and the 2023 Eleusis Cultural Capital of Europe.
Address: Marias Kiouri, Elefsina 19200

Photo: Dimitris Michalakis

Persephone’s Emancipation

"GERA 1’s brand-new work on the floor surface of Elefsina’s Arkopolis skatepark, which took 16 days and around 120 liters of paint to complete, attempts to highlight the modern physiognomy of this great historical city while glimpsing at its rich and intense past.

Drawing inspiration from Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s well-known baroque sculpture representing the abduction of Persephone by Pluto, the artist presumes to reinterpret the well-known Greek myth and cast light onto a new interpretation of it, emphasizing the moment of Persephone’s intense struggle for deliverance and her desire to remain in the upper world of the living.

Through an explosive polychrome, Gera centers his composition around the figure of Persephone, and symbolically identifies her with the figure of every young woman – arguably every modern Persephone, capable of bringing rebirth, springtime, and the advent of a new joyful reality, as Eleusis’s etymology and myths has always manifested. The forms and composition of this new work are found in a dynamic movement, they claim their living existence today, and they convey new meaning to ancient yet timeless concepts."

Evangelia Naka
Art Historian – Curator