In a narrow alleyway of Ermoupolis, far from the neoclassical mansions and the bustling Miaouli Square, lies one of the last authentic traces of industrial glory in Syros and Greece. The Hermoupolis Textile Museum is not a conventional museum with glass cases and labels. It is the Zisimatos factory itself—exactly as the workers left it on the evening of August 28, 1986, when an unexpected phone call permanently shut down operations.
The other Ermoupolis
Behind the image of the “Lady of the Cyclades,” there has always been another city: the city of labor. Following the flourishing of tanning and shipbuilding, the textile industry emerged as the new protagonist. The first factory was founded in 1870. By the early 20th century, 24 textile mills were operating, employing around 3,000 people—with a particularly strong presence of women. In total, Ermoupolis reached 68 industrial units and earned the nickname “the Manchester of Greece.”
This growth did not appear out of nowhere. It was the continuation of a long tradition: from home-based weaving and cotton cultivation, to industrial dyeing, and finally to large-scale industrial production. Refugees from Asia Minor gave it new momentum, bringing vital skills and labor.
The Zisimatos factory was founded in 1914 by Alexandros Konstantinopoulos and Giorgos Zisimatos. It began by producing socks and kalemkeria (headscarves) and later manufactured towels and other woven goods until its abrupt closure.
A museum of itself
“The Hermoupolis Textile Museum is not a conventional museum created to house a collection of objects. It is ‘a museum of itself,’” says Dimitris Stavrakopoulos, founder of Hermoupolis Heritage and director of the museum, to Greek Reporter. “Visitors enter the authentic shell of an old textile mill, where the entire production line, the machinery, the tools, and many elements of the factory’s everyday operation have been preserved.”
Through 13 successive stages of production, visitors can follow the complete journey of the yarn and understand how, through different machines and processes, it is transformed into a finished woven product, such as a towel. Perhaps the most striking detail is that the yarns are still on the looms.
“The factory was not reconstructed to look old. It still retains the real traces of its final period of operation. That is why the feeling created is that time suddenly stopped, and the visitor is entering a space where the previous shift could have ended just a few hours ago.”
Stavrakopoulos discovered the space almost by chance around 2013. After years of abandonment, the factory was revived in 2021 as a museum, thanks to the efforts of the non-profit organization Hermoupolis Heritage, which he founded.
We didn’t just save the machines—we saved the memories
For the museum team, preserving the building and the machinery was not enough. “A factory without its people is an empty shell,” notes Stavrakopoulos. “That is why we sought out people who worked in Ermoupolis’s textile industry and recorded their personal testimonies: their daily lives, working conditions, relationships among employees, the difficulties, but also the memories of an entire era.”
As part of this effort—with the support of the Cycladic Identity initiative of the Museum of Cycladic Art—the program “The Weavers and Their Memories” was carried out, highlighting the stories of the women workers. In this way, not only the tangible industrial heritage is preserved, but also the intangible memory of the people who gave life to these machines.
From the loom to the computer
Inside the looms of the Zisimatos factory lies an unexpected story of technology. In the early 19th century, Joseph-Marie Jacquard invented the loom controlled by punched cards. Each hole—or lack of one—determined which thread would be raised, allowing complex patterns to be woven automatically. It was, in essence, the first binary code.
Thirty years later, Charles Babbage drew inspiration from this mechanism for the Analytical Engine, the first theoretical general-purpose computing machine. His collaborator, Ada Lovelace, wrote that “the Analytical Engine weaves algebraic patterns, just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers and leaves.” The same logic of punched cards later passed into early computers and, ultimately, into the global network—the Web.
Thus, within the museum space, the yarns that still remain on the looms of 1986 are conceptually linked to today’s digital world: from the mythical web of Arachne, to Jacquard’s mechanical web, and finally to the internet. A single thread unites centuries of technology—and that thread can still be seen today in the factory of Ermoupolis.
An immersive experience
The museum’s philosophy is clear: the visitor does not remain a passive observer. They put on a work apron, fill out a time card, hear the sounds of the machines, and smell the cotton. The space itself functions almost like an authentic theatrical stage—only here, the stage was not created for a performance; it is the real factory.
“Through the immersive tour, the machinery, the sounds, the raw materials, and above all the personal stories of the people who worked here, the visitor is invited to become part of the narrative. Not simply to learn how a textile mill operated, but to feel, even for a moment, what it was like to live and work inside it. That is perhaps the most important thing we seek to preserve: not just a factory, but the memory of an entire era of Ermoupolis.”
Today, the Hermoupolis Textile Museum stands as the flagship of Hermoupolis Heritage and one of the most vivid examples of industrial heritage preservation in Greece. A factory that stopped abruptly four decades ago, yet has never stopped speaking.
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