Seven Decades of Greek Tourism Posters Go on Show in Athens

Greek tourism posters made between 1929 and 1996 go on show at the Radisson Blu Park Hotel Athens, as the hotel marks 50 years since it opened.

The exhibition brings together 30 works created for the state agency that promotes Greece abroad, known as the EOT. Together, they trace how Greece presented itself to the world for most of the 20th century.

Greek tourism posters from the National Historical Museum

All 30 Greek tourism posters belong to the National Historical Museum in Athens and come from its collections. The art historian Eleni Athanasiou curated the show for the hotel’s anniversary year.

Its title is Memory and Horizon. According to the organisers, it highlights how Greece has been promoted over time as a leading destination, through the art of the poster.

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Each work reflects a different artistic or graphic approach, so the walls read like a visual history of how Greece appeared abroad.

From Park Hotel to Radisson Blu

The hotel opened in 1976 as the Park Hotel and later joined the Radisson Hotels group, growing alongside Athens for five decades.

It stands opposite the Pedion tou Areos park and next door to Athens’ archaeological flagship, the National Archaeological Museum. Professionals, holidaymakers and international organisations have long used it as a base.

Its investments cover infrastructure, sustainable practices and services. In addition, the hotel links tourism with culture through contemporary Greek art shows, and the EOT posters of Memory and Horizon belong to that series.

Nelly’s Parthenon and the first Greek tourism posters

From 1929 until the mid-1990s, the poster did more than sell a destination. Instead, it told a story in a single image, where history, archaeology, landscape, light, sea, architecture and daily life could all meet.

In the end, Greek tourism posters carried something larger as well: the very idea of Greece. That ambition was clear from the start.

Back in 1929, Greece chose to introduce itself through one of its strongest symbols, the Parthenon. A photographic poster by the photographer Nelly’s, titled Athens – Parthenon, carried French text and spoke to an international audience from the outset.

It remains one of the most characteristic examples of early Greek tourism posters. Even then, the country appeared not only as a place on the map but also as a cultural idea.

The painters behind the EOT image

Leading painters helped shape the look of Greek tourism posters over the decades. Among them were Pericles Byzantios, Panagiotis Tetsis, Yannis Moralis, Spyros Vassiliou, Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghika, Giorgos Vakirtzis and Yannis Tsarouchis.

Designers, lithographers and photographers also played a decisive role. Each artist brought a personal visual idiom, and together they built a new visual identity for Greece.

After the Second World War, the EOT was re-established in 1950. In 1955, the Athens and Epidaurus Festival began as part of post-war cultural and tourism policy, linking ancient heritage with contemporary art.

The 1960s golden age of Greek tourism posters

The 1960s were perhaps the high point for Greek tourism posters. During that decade, Greek graphic design found a clear and recognisable visual language in dialogue with international modernism.

At the centre of this renewal stood Michalis Katzourakis, Frederick Carabott and Agni Katzouraki. Together, their work belongs to one of the most important chapters in the history of Greek graphic design and advertising.

Their posters relied on clean lines, geometric forms, abstraction, a love of empty space and strong colour contrasts. As a result, Greece shaped a modern visual identity without imitating dominant international trends.

A cycle closes in the digital age

Over the following decades, the aesthetics of Greek tourism posters shifted. Photography grew in importance, while new printing technologies changed what images could do and advertising became more complex.

Still, certain motifs never changed. What changed was the way those elements were arranged and given meaning.

Then, in the 1990s, television, the internet and digital media transformed how images were made, shared and seen. Finally, the vertical EOT poster that promoted Greece for decades became a valuable historical document, and a long cycle came to a close.

“If we look at the whole journey from 1929 to 1996, we will find that the history of the tourism poster is a history of constant transformation. But behind all these changes something remains constant: the need to narrate Greece. To make it visible and recognisable. And perhaps, in the end, to understand it ourselves.”Eleni Athanasiou, art historian and curator of Memory and Horizon

Visiting Memory and Horizon

“Today, when we stand before it, we do not see only an advertising image from another era. We see a gaze: the gaze of a country upon itself,” Athanasiou said.

For the curator, the National Historical Museum collection offers more than a look back at Greek tourism posters. “It is a journey through different versions of Greek identity,” she said.

Memory and Horizon fills the hotel’s common areas until Sunday 17 January 2027. Because the hotel sits beside the National Archaeological Museum, visitors can easily pair the posters with the ancient treasures next door.

Source: travel.gr

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