Empirikio was founded in 1917 as an orphanage (Empirikio Asylum for Homeless Children). Until 1925, the Empirikio operated under the supervision of the Ministry of Welfare. It then became a reformatory school for girls and came under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Justice. During the Occupation, it was converted into a women’s prison under Greek, Italian and German administration. Criminal prisoners were held on the first floor of the building, prisoners of the Germans on the second floor, and those of the Italians on the third floor. The political prisoners were women of all ages, from underage girls to elderly women and members of various resistance organisations in Athens and the provinces. They were transferred to the prison after interrogation, usually directly from the German or Italian guardhouse in Athens. Toula Mara-Michalakea was arrested as a member of Lefteri Nea (the women’s youth organisation of the EAM) in January 1943 at the age of 15: “The composition of the people [at Empirikio] was different, that is, there were many provincial women, there were artists, there were middle-class women, there were petty bourgeois women, there were working women. What I mean by this is that we were prisoners for various reasons; we weren’t just EAM members, we weren’t just communists, we were all different people. There were also many people from the islands who were hiding the British at that time.”[1] The confirmed presence of several women accused of participating in intelligence networks, espionage organisations or hiding British citizens is combined with the fact that the German and Italian counterintelligence services were based at the Empirikio: “The German and Italian counterintelligence officers serving at the Empirikio Asylum in Ampelokipoi, which had been converted from a juvenile detention centre into a women’s prison, had calculated everything: Gestapo agents stationed throughout the area, about ten soldiers at the entrance, the same number inside, 24-hour guard posts and sentries, Greek-speaking specialists in the offices and administration, and Greek employees who had all been vetted, one by one.[2] Empirikio was used also during the Civil War. Today, it houses the 46th Unified Lyceum of Athens (2014) and the 15th Primary School of Athens (2015).
[1] Testimony of Toula Mara-Michalakea, in: Maria Fafaliou, Koritsia se periklistous chorous. Martyries [Girls in Confinment. Testimonies] 1942-1952, Alexandria, Athens 2020, p. 79.
[2] Eleftherios Skiadas, Artemis Petranti: Ekseftelise tin antikataskopia ton kataktiton. Epichirisi apodrasis Empirikio. Esose to diktyo Tsigante to 1942 [She humiliated the occupiers’ counterintelligence
Escape operation ‘Empeirikeio’: She saved the Tsigante network in 1942], Ta Athinaika, 22.10.2018. https://www.taathinaika.gr/artemis-petranti-i-ellinida-pou-ekseftelise-tin-antikataskopeia-ton-kataktiton/ (last accessed: 1 October 2025).
