From "Lefki" to the Vanikiotis Stream: the history beneath Papanastasiou Street

Alexandroupoli is a city with a clear urban identity, built on a grid plan of wide parallel and perpendicular streets. Its growth, however, was always shaped by its geography. One of its most distinctive boundaries was the Vanikiotis stream, which came down from the northern hills, crossed the town and flowed into the Thracian Sea.

Its story is a good window onto how Ottoman Dedeağaç became today's capital of Evros.

"Lefki" and the two bridges

Before it took the name of the family that owned the land at its mouth, the stream was known as "Lefki" (poplar), because its bed was thick with stands of poplar trees.

In Ottoman times it formed the town's natural western edge and separated it from the settlement of Kallithea. Contact with the countryside and the road to Makri depended on two wooden bridges:

• The northern bridge stood next to the old hospital, the stone building that now houses the Music School, where the built-up town ended at the time.
• The southern bridge, closer to the sea and next to the old Ottoman customs post, marked the start of today's road to Makri.

In the 1920s, after the incorporation of Thrace into Greece and the arrival of refugees, the wooden bridges were replaced by reinforced concrete ones. The southern bridge stood until 1959, when it collapsed after a severe storm. It was rebuilt straight away, wider, to keep the link with the national road.

The Vanikiotis family

The change of name from "Lefki" to "Vanikiotis stream" followed a custom of old Alexandroupoli: places took the names of the big landowners of each area. The Vanikiotis family estate spread across the southern mouth of the stream.

The family is also linked to a charming episode. In 1926 the actor Tzavalas Karousos came to Alexandroupoli on tour with Christoforos Nezer's theatre company. In the front rows of the "Ilysia" cinema sat 18-year-old Eleni Vanikioti, who was already working as a clerk at the Evros Prefecture. It was love at first sight, and the two were married.

Covering the stream and the ring road

For decades the stream was a source of worry. Sudden winter downpours flooded the surrounding neighbourhoods, and the open bed inside the town caused health problems.

The solution came in the late 1980s, under mayor Tasos Soulakakis, who describes the project in his book "From the town to the Municipality". The streambed was enclosed in an underground reinforced concrete culvert that carries the water to the sea. On top of it the ring road of the time was built, today's Alexandrou Papanastasiou Street. The project joined neighbourhoods such as Kallithea and Exopoli to the town.

Following the stream today

The Vanikiotis stream now flows silently beneath the asphalt of Papanastasiou Street, but you can still trace its course:

• Music School (old hospital): stand in front of the stone building at the northern end of Papanastasiou and imagine that here, until the early 20th century, stood the wooden bridge where the town ended.
• The mouth: heading down to the sea, near the old customs post, you reach the area of the Vanikiotis estate, where the now invisible stream meets the Thracian Sea.