The Kypseli Municipal Market gave us our first year. We are not leaving because something went wrong — we are leaving because 18,000 people no longer fit.
What worked in Kypseli
The Market had something you rarely find: a neighbourhood. People walked in off the street, the exhibitors stood side by side within talking distance, and the whole thing had the scale of a street market rather than a trade fair. If you were there, that is how you remember it.
And the very thing that made it warm was also its limit.
Three things that did not fit
Height
A horror festival lives on darkness, and darkness needs height. In a low-ceilinged space the lighting hits you in the face instead of falling from above; the sets look like sets. At the Old Depot the roof is industrial and high, which means the lighting can finally hide what needs hiding.
The second stage
In Kypseli, anything with sound was heard everywhere. You could not run a film screening and a dance show at the same time — one swallowed the other. This year the programme runs across four zones in parallel: the screening hall, the workshops area, the outdoor space and the free activities that play all day. That is impossible in a single room.
The queue
The most common comment of our first year was not about the content. It was about the waiting. When the escape room and the market share the same corridor, the queue for one becomes a wall for the other. In the new venue the zones have their own entrances and their own flow.
What the visitor gains
- More hours. On Saturday the venue is open 10:00 to 23:00 — thirteen hours, instead of one concentrated evening.
- More exhibitors. The Halloween Market hosts over 80 shops; a first at this size in Greece.
- Permanent installations. The Horror Museum and the Carlos & Jordi Grangel exhibition need a space of their own for three days, not a corner that goes up and comes down again.
What we lose, honestly
The neighbourhood. The Depot is in Gazi, next to Kerameikos, and it does not have the accidental passing traffic the Market had. Whoever comes will have come on purpose. That changes the crowd — for the better for those looking for the festival, for the worse for the grandmother who was walking past and stepped in to see what was going on.
The second thing we lose is the innocence of being small. A festival of 80 exhibitors is not run the way a festival of 30 is. More signage, more organisation, less improvisation. We are trying to hold on to that second one where it counts.
Where exactly it is
Old OSY Depot, 1 Ermou and Pireos Street, Gazi. Kerameikos metro, two minutes on foot. The venue is on one level. Detailed access directions are on a page of their own — along with the buses, for anyone the metro does not suit.