In more detail, the Municipality of Piraeus granted a building permit and the Ephorate of Antiquities of Piraeus gave approval to reconstruct an old ground floor building of 56 square meters and to add a floor of 33.77 square meters with a roof, in the central sector of the settlement of Hydra.
The SC, in no. 1462/2024 his decision, (chairman the vice-chairman Christos Douhanis and rapporteur the priest Zoi Theodorikakou), states that the settlement of Hydra has been designated a monumental settlement, which "prevails over its other designations as a historical place, a traditional settlement, a landscape of special natural beautiful and a place in need of special state protection, and this because this monumental character subjects the settlement to a stricter protection regime".
Thus, for "building in the settlement of Hydra, it is necessary to observe the rules that derive from the special and stricter protective regime of the monumental settlements, based on which the only permissible building is the construction of buildings, as they existed before, since these are what gave the settlement its monumental character.
And the SC continues that "it is not enough to comply with the provisions that apply in general to traditional settlements, within which the construction of new buildings is also allowed, despite what the relevant circular of the Ministry of the Interior provides to the contrary, which misinterprets the rules that govern the town-planning status of the settlement in question, as they have been shaped by the jurisprudence, with regard to the construction of a building on a plot of land that had been built on in the past".
In the settlement of Hydra, according to the CoS, only the reconstruction of a building similar to the one whose existence can be proven is allowed, just as the reconstruction of a building in the form that is proven to have existed before is allowed.
Finally, the CoS ruled that the building permit is illegal in the part that allowed the addition of a floor to an existing ground-floor building in the central sector of the settlement of Hydra, as the floor did not previously exist and annulled the challenged building permit, as well as the decision of the Ephorate Antiquities.
