Inside Syros’ 162-Year-Old Apollo Theatre, Inspired by La Scala

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SYROS, October 2026 — The Apollo Theatre in Ermoupoli, a 162-year-old landmark inspired by Milan’s La Scala, still plays a leading role in the cultural life of Syros.

From Vardakas Square, known locally as Theatre Square, its plain facade gives little hint of the lavish hall inside.

Its architecture and decoration reveal a long history, while comforts and technology added in the recent restoration keep it in modern use.

One regular user is Animasyros, the international animation festival that Syros hosts every autumn. Organisers set the 2026 festival’s official opening at the Apollo Theatre for 23 September, Greek City Times reported.

The festival also screened Ermoupoli, a short animated documentary it co-produced with MagentaTV for the series Places of Hellenism. Part of a “200 Years of Ermoupoli” tribute, the film gives the theatre a starring role.

Inside the Apollo Theatre

In the foyer, marble and brightly coloured ceiling paintings set the tone. However, they are only a prelude to the main hall.

There, a painted ceiling honours great figures of art and thought, while boxes rise in several tiers.

The hall seats only 350 people. Even so, it carries a real sense of grandeur.

Italian architect Pietro Sampo drew up the original design, and the Apollo Theatre keeps elements of it. His models included La Scala in Milan and the San Carlo in Naples.

He also drew on the academic theatre in Castelfranco and Florence’s Teatro della Pergola. Greek City Times’ weekend guide to the town highlights this Italian pedigree too.

A town built by refugees

The Apollo Theatre’s story begins in the early 19th century, when Ermoupoli grew fast as a home for refugees.

Following the Greek Revolution of 1821, they came from Chios, Psara and Kasos, as well as Smyrna and Ayvalik.

As the economy boomed in the first half of that century, so did a thirst for art.

Syros, long a pioneer of women’s rights, even had a local theatre troupe founded by a woman. Writer Evanthia Kairi, sister of Enlightenment scholar Theophilos Kairis, set it up.

Thomai Mendrinou, Deputy Mayor for Culture at the Syros municipality, described how the town and its theatre came about.

“Ermoupoli was born in very difficult historical circumstances, but the refugees created, within a few decades, a city with commercial, maritime and, above all, cultural radiance. The Apollo Theatre is perhaps its most characteristic symbol. It is the first theatre of free Greece, built in a newly founded city with European ambitions.”Thomai Mendrinou, Deputy Mayor for Culture, Syros-Ermoupoli

Verdi, stars and wartime

The Apollo Theatre opened on 20 April 1864 with Verdi’s Rigoletto. Mikes Salvagos, the man who conceived the project, attended the premiere.

Its opening program also included Donizetti’s La Favorita and Verdi’s La Traviata and Un Ballo in Maschera.

The theatre gave local artists a proper home. Until then, they had performed in shacks, warehouses, clubs and coffee houses.

Builders finished the work in a record two years. But weaknesses soon appeared, and repairs began after only a decade.

Despite this, the stage in Ermoupoli never fell silent until the Second World War. Operas, plays, operettas and revues followed, with stars such as Mitsos Myrat, Manos Katrakis, Attik, Kyveli, Vasilis Argyropoulos and Marika Kotopouli.

Kotopouli also gave the final performance of her life there, in Dario Niccodemi’s The Shadow in 1953.

“During the Occupation, the Apollo Theatre was used by the Italian and then the German garrison for film screenings,” Mendrinou said of a dark chapter in its history.

After liberation, it carried on as a cinema while still hosting some plays, she added.

Mendrinou said those hard years belong to the building’s story too.

“This is a period that reminds us that the theatre did not only live through times of prosperity. It lived through wars, the Occupation, economic decline, abandonment and dangers. And perhaps that makes it even more moving that today it is, once again, a space of freedom, creation and culture.”Thomai Mendrinou, Deputy Mayor for Culture, Syros-Ermoupoli

Restoring the Apollo Theatre

After the war, as Greece struggled to recover, the Apollo Theatre faltered. It shut soon after Kotopouli’s farewell, once the building was declared unfit for use.

A renovation effort began in 1970, but it dragged on for decades because of a lack of funds. Locals still longed to see it revived.

In one old black-and-white photograph, a banner on the facade asks, “Why have you abandoned me?” Even so, amateur troupes kept performing in the unfinished building from the 1970s to 2000.

An architectural team led by Petros Pikionis began restoring the Apollo Theatre in the 1990s. The European Union and Greece’s Ministry of Culture funded the work.

It finally reopened on 17 July 2000 with Theofrastos Sakellaridis’s O Vaftistikos, staged by the Athens Chamber Opera.

“What we see today is an effort to restore its historical character, and not a simple ‘renovation’ in the modern sense,” Mendrinou said. Painter Dimitris Fortsas created the ceiling paintings, a key part of its look today, she added.

In 2026, the Syros-Ermoupoli municipality also replaced the facade’s window frames, “because a monument of such value needs constant care,” she said.

For visitors, Mendrinou has simple advice. “If you have the chance, watch a performance at the Apollo Theatre,” she said. “Because then you truly understand what it means for a historic theatre to keep breathing.”

Source: travel.gr

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