MARATHON DAM TOUR

EYDAP's Historical Archive in collaboration with Clio Muse Tours, created the digital-audio tour "Marathon Dam: Life in the settlement", designing a 17-point route where visitors can listen to stories of life in the settlement from the time of its construction and afterwards.

The settlement of Marathon was created in 1926, in the context of the construction of the Marathon Dam, in order to house and feed more than 900 people, together with their families, who were working on this important technical project for the construction of the water supply system of the city of Athens, during the 1926-1931 period. The settlement of Marathon was initially a practical solution to the need to provide better living conditions for the workers, as the project was to last for several years, but it ended up becoming a small community, "a little Paris", as its inhabitants referred to it, until the 1970s.

By taking the digital-audio tour, visitors will be able to learn both information about this great technical project and stories about everyday life in the settlement that they may never have heard before. They will be able to explore how the houses of the inhabitants of the settlement were built, whether there was water supply and sewerage in the settlement, a doctor and hospital for the injured, a school, what games the children played there, what life in the settlement was like during the occupation, what the Dam is like today, and many other issues while wandering through the fragments of the settlement's memory.

The information we are gathering about the Marathon settlement comes from EYDAP's Historical Archive. This historical evidence about the settlement was enriched by the Oral History Group of EYDAP employees, which collected accounts from people who lived in the settlement, either from their descendants or from residents of nearby towns, between the 1950s and 1960s.