Onassis Foundation has restored Cavafy House in Alexandria

Starting with the acquisition of the Cavafy Archive in 2012, its digitization and disposal to the public and researchers in 2019, and the housing of the Cavafy Archive in the area of Plaka in 2023, which includes the physical archive and library of the poet as well as a collection of personal items and artworks with references to the poet himself, the Onassis Foundation undertook at the beginning of 2022 the restoration of the Cavafy House in Alexandria, in partnership with the Hellenic Foundation for Culture. On May 11, 2024, the Cavafy House opens its doors to the public with the aim of becoming a pole of attraction for visitors from all over the world. Under the architectural design of Flux-office by Eva Manidaki and Thanassis Demiris, the place where C. P. Cavafy lived most of his life and created so many of the works that made him a universal poet has been restored and reconfigured in order to highlight the image of the residence as it was in the years the poet lived, to illuminate his relationship with the city of Alexandria and the impact of his work to this day, but also to transport us back in time. Images of his biography take shape in an apartment in the center of Alexandria. The journey of the Cavafy archive is being realized with the invaluable aid of the Archive’s nine-member scientific committee and the advisory scientific committees for individual works.

C. P. Cavafy moved to this apartment at what was then 10 Rue Lepsius (now 4 Rue C. P. Cavafy, formerly Rue Sharm El Shiekh) in 1907. The building was probably erected during the first decade of the 20th century, between 1905 and 1907. It stands as an example of the eclectic architectural style that prevailed in Alexandria during the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. Cavafy during the first year lived together with his older brother Paul. The following year, Paul retired and moved permanently to France, to the town of Hyères, and from then on, the poet lived here alone. After his death, the building functioned as a boarding house named Amir, among other uses.

The street where the Cavafy House is located was called Lepsius during Cavafy's era but was later renamed to C. P. Cavafy to honor the Greek poet. The building was surrounded by the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate, the Greek Hospital, and the city's brothels, which Cavafy christened the "Temple of the Soul," the "Temple of the Body," and the "Temple of the Flesh," respectively.

On November 16, 1992, on the initiative of the historian and writer Kostis Moskoff, cultural attaché at the Greek Embassy in Cairo, the Cavafy Museum was inaugurated in this space. From 1994 to 2020, the Cavafy Museum also hosted the Stratis Tsirkas Room, which was dedicated to the acclaimed Egyptian Greek novelist. A young Tsirkas met C. P. Cavafy and visited him in this apartment during the summer of 1930. Many years later, he wrote two landmark works on the poet, Cavafy and his Era (1958) and The Political Cavafy (1971). On May 11, 2024, the Cavafy House has been reopened to the public, with rooms filled with significant objects that illuminate the life of the world-renowned poet.

The President of the Hellenic Republic, Katerina Sakellaropoulou comments: "With joy and emotion, I inaugurated the renovated Cavafy House in Alexandria, a project undertaken and implemented with special care by the Onassis Foundation. The enhancement of this space, where the spirit of Cavafy's unique poetry still circulates, constitutes a significant contribution not only to the Greek community of Alexandria and to Greek scholars and admirers of Cavafy's work, but also to the global community, which has recognized in his verses a great poet of the 20th century."

The President of the Onassis Foundation, Mr. Anthony S. Papadimitriou, comments: “ The Onassis Foundation and I personally feel extremely proud that our sponsorship led to the restoration of the Cavafy House in Alexandria, in collaboration with the Hellenic Foundation for Culture. It is where Cavafy spent most of his life and created dozens of works in constant dialogue with history. Hence, another “dialogue” begins between Athens and Alexandria, one that carves a singular path of research and further quest. With the restoration of the Cavafy House, the Onassis Foundation equally restores a part of the honor our cultural legacy rightly deserves. At the same time, it widens the spectrum of research possibilities around the future of Cavafy’s poetry. The Cavafy House was never intended nor aspires to be an exact replica of Cavafy's apartment from so many years ago. Whatever memorabilia, personal and decorative objects we have rescued are, moreover, safely stored in the Cavafy Archive in Athens. In Alexandria, we tried to provide just a glimpse of the Poet’s existence, a sense of his life and the space he inhabited. So, in Alexandria, we have the place where Cavafy lived, and in Athens, the things he lived with.”

The President of the Hellenic Foundation for Culture, Nikos A. Koukis, comments: “For the Hellenic Foundation for Culture, the inauguration of the renovated Cavafy House in Alexandria—a demanding project by its nature and one entirely taken under the wings of the Onassis Foundation for its realization—is an event of utmost significance. A landmark of Hellenism beyond the Greek borders and the house where the great Alexandrian poet lived a large part of his life is finally being delivered to the general public, fully restored and with great care given in every detail by a superb and much-experienced team of collaborators of the Onassis Foundation, who worked diligently and methodically for two years, often having to surpass many and unprecedented from the outset obstacles. The collaboration between the Hellenic Foundation for Culture and the Onassis Foundation to operate the Cavafy House was a strategic choice. The outcome fully justifies the intentions behind it, as they transfigured into a tangible and comprehensive reality. The Cavafy House will constitute a life-giving cultural beacon for Greek letters throughout the world. We are handing to all Greeks and Philhellenes a work of singular aesthetic value—indeed, a paradigm work.”

Each room of the Cavafy House bears a title and includes significant heirlooms, faithful copies of documents, works from the Alexandrian poet’s life and oeuvre, as well as contemporary works of art that were chosen with the ceaseless aid of academic advisors for the restored House.

The visitor first comes upon “The Global Poet” room, which includes translations of his oeuvre from all over the world, in chronological order of publications by language, from the 1950s to the present day. Next is the “Alexandria Still” room, which highlights with the use of maps and chronicles the poet’s connection with the city of Alexandria—the quintessential locus of the Cavafian work and life—as well as the ways in which the life and body of work of the poet unfolded and often became influenced by the history of Egypt, culminating on the balcony overlooking Alexandria. The rooms “Genealogy and Personal Life” and “Salon, a Recreation” follow, with the former including diaries, letters, notes, and documents that relate to his family’s genealogical tree and the latter recreating his salon as it was during the time he lived there and welcomed friends and intellectuals—the room also includes furniture from the first phase of the space’s re-operation under Kostis Moskov’s initiative. Right after, the visitor encounters the room “Cavafy Now,” which displays works of art and all the video works from the “Visual Cavafy” series commissioned by the Onassis Foundation as part of the “Archive of Desire” festival in New York in spring 2023, as well as the “In Dialogue” room, which features the mail correspondence of C. P. Cavafy with writers of the time and newspaper clippings about his work. The last two rooms are dedicated to “The Archive” and “The House,” including publications of poems and relevant bibliography from the Cavafy archive collection, as well as the history of the house itself with snapshots of the apartment’s course in time.

ACADEMIC ADVISORS FOR THE CAVAFY HOUSE EXHIBITION

Hala Halim, Associate Professor in the Departments of Comparative Literature and Middle Eastern Studies, New York University, USA
Peter Jeffreys, Associate Professor of English,Suffolk University, Boston, USA
Louisa Karapidaki, Museologist, Hellenic Folklore Research Center, Academy of Athens, Greece
Alexander Kazamias, Associate Professor in Politics,Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Coventry University, UK
Gonda Van Steen, Koraes Chair of Modern Greekand Byzantine History, Language and Literature, King’s College London, UK
Mohamed Adel Dessouki, Urban History Advisor, University of Alexandria, Egypt

CAVAFY ARCHIVE ACADEMIC COMMITTEE

Stathis Gourgouris, Professor of Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia University, New York, USA
Maria Boletsi, Endowed Professor of Modern Greek Studies at the University of Amsterdam (Marilena Laskaridis Chair) and Associate Professor in Comparative Literature at Leiden University, The Netherlands
Martha Vassiliadi, Assistant Professor of Philology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
Bart Soethaert, Principal Investigator at the Cluster of Excellence “Temporal Communities: Doing Literature in a Global Perspective” (EXC 2020) and post-doctoral researcher at Freie Universität Berlin, Germany
Amalia Pappa, Deputy Director General of the General State Archives, Greece
Peter Jeffreys, Associate Professor of English at Suffolk University, Boston, USA
Christina Dounia, Professor Emerita of Modern Greek Literature at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece
Takis Kayalis, Professor of Modern Greek Literature at the Hellenic Open University, Greece
Vicente Fernández González, Associate Professor of Translation and Interpreting (Modern Greek) at the University of Malaga, Spain

CAVAFY HOUSE PROJECT CREDITS

ONASSIS FOUNDATION
Anthony S. Papadimitriou, President of the Board

ONASSIS CULTURE
Αfroditi Panagiotakou, Director of Culture
Dimitris Theodoropoulos, Deputy Director of Culture

ONASSIS EDUCATION
Effie Tsiotsiou, Executive Director & Director of Education
Marianna Christofi, Project Development Manager
Angeliki Mousiou, Cavafy Archive Researcher
Eleanna Semitelou, Projects Coordinator

CAVAFY HOUSE EXHIBITION CREDITS
Design & Curation: Flux-office: Eva Manidaki & Thanassis Demiris
Collaborator: Eleni Arapostathi
Graphic Design: Katerina Vlahbey
English Translations & Editing: Karren Emmerich
Greek Translations & Editing: Vassilis Douvitsas
Arabic Translations: Khaled Raouf
Arabic Proofreading: Roni Bou Saba
Project Coordination: Effie Tsiotsiou, Marianna Christofi, Eleanna Semitelou
Building Restoration Contractor: Codep LTD Egypt
Reproduction of Archival Items: Babis Lengas
Hanging of Artworks: MOVEART
Bespoke constructions & display units’ production & installation supervision: Cluster