Hello,
I am looking for additional information about the small zoo situated within the National Garden Athens.
Would you have any further source or date about its history and its development? Any historical map? Pictures?
It seems that there are still nowadays quite a few cages and enclosures left, mostly occupied by domestic stock but what about the recent history? and the more distant one?
I have checked already many sources and books within my library but without any success so far.
Thanks in advance for your help.
I know it's a bit late but for anyone interested here is what I could gather.
The national garden (inside of which the zoo is situated) started as the royal gardens of Greece in the 1840s during programs of construction for the royal family of Greece (after all Greece had gotten it's independence just in the 1830s (it started as a republic, but the powers offered support only in exchange of becoming a monarchy and having as a ruler King Otto who was Bavarian)
The gardens were more or less a pet project of his wife Queen Amalia and were not open to the public. At the 1850s they were expanded and in 1923, during a period of the greek republic, it was opened to the public.
Now regarding the menagerie, I couldn't find a date of when it opened, however I am guessing it was after the 1950s since that is when the greek civil war ended and it makes the most sense as a book written by one of the earlier curators (the fifth one if I'm not mistaken) which was written in 1896 doesn't mention any zoological collection.
Moreover, as for the species housed there, in an article which contains an interview of one of the animal keepers that has worked there for over 30 years it is mentioned that the menagerie housed aside from domestics , an ostrich, lions, two apes (which probably refers to macaques, but due to the weird way animal names translate from greek to English I m not completely sure...), Roe deer, deer (which is probably fallow, since I haven't heard of anyone exhibiting red deer in Greece, but I could be wrong), an eagle and a vulture (and possibly falcons but that could have been an error...)
The lions were later sent to England, the ostrich went to Attica zoo, the monkeys went to the Netherlands and the falcons (though he could have been talking about the eagle and vulture went to Aigina (Egina).
Nowadays the collection consists of ducks, peacocks, kri kri goats (wild Cretan goats) and rabbits.
There are still as you mentioned many of the old enclosures present but some (like the lion cage) are just empty.
If anyone is interested entrance to the gardens is free and it is quite calming to just walk around and escape the busy city (also you will witness the introduced population of wild parrots of the gardens).
