Planetarium - Evgenidion Foundation

The planetarium as a synthetic training device, one of the most enjoyable and effective ever devised, quickly became an excellent way for millions of people to learn things they believed were beyond their learning abilities, for older generations to share their knowledge with younger ones and for experts to come into contact with the layman. That is because the planetarium has an amazing capacity that enables both scientists and those with just a basic education to enjoy exactly the same show and share the sensation of the overall general development in events and the relation between cause and effect.

The late Eugene Eugenides did not define the directions that the Foundation should follow. He left that to the discretion of the Foundation directors. As such, his late sister, Marianthi Simou, the first governor and the soul of the foundation, decided to add a planetarium to the Foundation building complex, following the recommendations of her advisers, Stavros Plakidis, professor and chairman of the Department of Astronomy at the University of Athens, and Dimitris Kasapis, lecturer at the National Technical University of Athens.

The amount spent to this end was colossal for that time, and the extremely costly main planetarium projector was a donation by Nikolaos Vernikos-Eugenides. That very first projector, a Mark IV made by the Carl Zeiss Company, was 6 metres high, weighed 2.5 tonnes and consisted of 29,000 parts. Its two round ends, as well as its midsection, were covered by 150 projection systems that enabled it to project onto the hemispherical dome, among other things, 8,900 stars with a magnitude of up to 6.5, the movement of the Sun, the Moon and the five brightest planets, the image of the visible sky, as it appears from every point on Earth, and the seasonal changes.

Today, this marvellous instrument adorns the lobby on the first floor, placed as an exhibit in the exact same spot that it occupied throughout its operation from 1966 to 1999. Thus, the new Eugenides Foundation building on Syngrou Avenue was opened on 7 June 1966 and the first planetarium in Greece and only one in Southeastern Europe began operating.

The New Digital Planetarium has provided for access to disabled persons, including specially designed outdoor and indoor entrances with ramps, lifts to all floors, accessible WCs, specially designed seats in the projection auditorium and parking spaces for the exclusive use of disabled persons.

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