The Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) celebrates the fifth anniversary of the opening of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center (SNFCC) in Kallithea in 2017.

Despite the hardships of the economic crisis and, more recently, the Covid-19 pandemic, the SNFCC has gone from strength to strength in its first five years, providing the Greek state with a unique public space for artistic expression, culture and recreation.

Since its inception, the SNF has allocated €608 million to the project through a raft of grants to support operational and programming costs for the first five years. The foundation has pledged another €10 million grant to support running costs for another year.

Since 2017, the SNFCC has implemented more than 16,000 open events, hosted 20 million visitors, and supported numerous infrastructure projects, including the creation of the dancing Fountains in the Canal, the Dome at the Labyrinth, and the Delta restaurant, with a focus on sustainability.

As part of the SNF Recharging the Youth initiative, the SNFCC has supported over 900 young people on 11 cycles of paid internship programs, enhancing key skills and improving employability.

With the SNF’s support, the SNFCC has fostered collaborative partnerships with more than 40 Greek and international institutions, including the Barça Foundation, the Perimeter Institute, the Takis Foundation, and the George Zongolopoulos Foundation, as well as a recent collaboration with Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York.

The SNFCC has also hosted major geopolitical events, most notably a speech by President Barack Obama in November 2016 and the EuroMED7 Summit of the heads of state and government of European countries on the Mediterranean in September 2021.

“The most important achievement of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center (SNFCC) is the way it has been embraced by all people, creating—as we had envisioned along with its architect, Renzo Piano—an open and accessible public space,” said SNF Co-President Andreas Dracopoulos.

“It took a lot of effort, a lot of energy, and a lot of work by many people, as well as close cooperation between the public and private sectors. The SNFCC is an international landmark, which is home to the Greek National Opera (GNO) and the National Library of Greece (NLG), along with Stavros Niarchos Park. It is a place thousands of people embrace and visit daily to be entertained and express themselves, to join conversations, to meet up and enjoy quality time together. We at SNF continue to support the SNFCC, to the extent of our abilities, while looking forward and hoping that, in the near future, it will be able to rely solely on its own strengths and continue to fulfill its role as a project made by people for people,” he added.

The hugely successful SNF Nostos event returns in person this year on June 23 and 24, celebrating art, culture, and learning. The focus of this year’s event will be health, as defined by the pandemic.

The success of the SNFCC in numbers (2017 – 2021):

20 million visits
More than 16,000 events
More than 900 participants in 11 cycles of the paid internship program
110,000 participants in guided tours
More than 340,000 student visits
37 different dancing fountain choreographies

For more information about the SNFCC, visit here.