Evzones at the Presidential Mansion and Unknown Soldier Square, Athens

Historically the Evzones were light infantry units in the Greek army, today they are members of the Presidential Guard. They stand guard at both the Presidential Mansion and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. I knew that they do changing of the guard ceremonies and I wasn’t particularly interested about going out of my way to see them but after leaving the Panathenaic Stadium I happened to come across one such ceremony outside of the Presidential Mansion.

It was certainly an interesting sight and there was also only a handful of other tourists around, plus a couple of police officers, watching proceedings. The Evzones date back to around 1867 but after the Second World War the original regiments were disbanded as part of a modernisation drive of the armed forces, all except one regiment whose role is largely ceremonial. As well as their guarding duty they also raise the flag at the Acropolis after sunrise every Sunday and lower it at sundown.

Ceremonial doesn’t mean not trained soldiers however – Greece has mandatory military service for men and Evzones are handpicked from this large pool of candidates. They undergo weeks of what is described as top secret training in order to perform this specialist role – apparently half the selections fail so it must be pretty vigorous whatever it is. They work in pairs and if one of them can’t perform they don’t stand guard with anyone else. They can’t speak while on duty but there is always a regular soldier chaperoning that they can communicate with if necessary. Their uniforms are so elaborate that it can take them an hour to get dressed.

One of their most well known guarding posts is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Dedicated to Greek soldiers killed during war it was created between 1930 and 1932 by sculptor Fokion Rok and architect Emmanuel Lazaridis. The central relief shows a fallen Greek soldier.

I didn’t see this for myself but there are changing of the guard ceremonies every hour with a more elaborate ceremony taking place on Sunday mornings at 11am. But even without watching the ceremony the tomb is an impressive monument to visit – there are the names of significant battles from the Balkan Wars and World War I on the left and Greco-Turkish War and World War II and other conflicts on the right.