The National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) is the oldest technical university in Greece. It was founded in the spring of 1837, almost simultaneously with the modern Greek State, following Greece’s liberation from the Turkish yoke, as the “School of Arts”. At that time, it was a technical school, operating on Sundays and holidays, and offering instruction to those desiring to master in building construction. 

In 1914, the establishment was given the official title of “Ethnicon Metsovion Polytechnion”. “Ethnicon” means “National” and “Metsovion” was introduced in the title to honour the establishment’s great donors and benefactors Nikolaos Stournaris, Eleni Tositsa, Michail Tositsas and Georgios Averof, all from Metsovo, a small town in the region of Epirus. The same title is still in use in Greece but, abroad, the title “National Technical University of Athens” is used instead in order to avoid possible misconceptions regarding the Institution’s academic status. The last radical reformation in the organization and administration of NTUA took place in 1917, when a special bill gave NTUA a new structure and established the Schools of Civil, Architecture, Surveying, Mechanical & Electrical and Chemical Engineering.

Today, NTUA’s Schools educate 13,000 students and are located –except the School of Architecture– on the Zografou Campus, a spacious (910,000m2) and open green site, 6 km from the centre of Athens. It includes buildings of 260,000m2 with fully equipped lecture theaters, laboratories, libraries, a Central Library, a Computer Centre and a Medical Centre. Also, on the campus are a Hall of Residence, restaurants, stationery and bookshop, a gymnasium and playing fields.