Florina Town Hall (1905)

After the liberation of Florina, the first municipal authority, with Mayor Tegos Sapountzis, was housed in the Ottoman Town Hall, which was located at the intersection of K. Paleologou and M. Alexandrou streets.
Then the mansion of Avdi Yusuf Bey, the current Town Hall, was rented by the Municipality of Florina (105-107 Megalou Alexandrou Street), which came into the possession of the Greek public sector after the exchange of the populations of Greece and Turkey and was purchased towards the end of the 1920s..
It is a typical urban house of the early 19th century. The entrance to the main hall on the ground floor is formed into an alcove, while two circular columns delimit the opening, creating a form of propylon. Three internal steps lead to the raised level of the hall, where the imposing internal staircase is located at the other end. The edges of the building are accentuated by false pilasters, which divide the surface of the façade. In this way, the structure of the interior space is marked, while the openings of the building are organised symmetrically in relation to the vertical axis of the central entrance. The balcony in the centre of the floor is a later addition. The fire on New Year’s Day 2009 fortunately destroyed a part of it. As part of a recent reconstruction of the interior, the symmetrical shape of the floor plan was retained by reducing the width of the central hall, disregarding the relationship of the space to the openings in the façade.

TEXT SOURCE: http://history.eled.uowm.gr/wp
SOURCES OF PHOTOS: Archive of the Municipality of Florina – Christos Tegos