Evaristo de Chirico
Evaristo de Chirico was an Italian-Greek engineer known for his contributions to railway construction in Greece. He played a key role in developing the railway network of Thessaly in the late 19th century. He was the farther of the artist Giorgio de Chirico.
Early life
Born into a family a Greek ancestry. He was the son of Sicilian barone Giorgio Filigone di Chirico and Countess Adelaide Mabilli y Bulini. His maternal grandfather, Don Lorenzo Eliondoro Mabilli y Bulini, was the Spanish consul in Corfu and originally from Alicante.Career
After graduating in engineering, De Chirico specialized in railway construction. He gained recognition for his work with the company Evaristo de Chirico & Co., which built railway lines in Bulgaria. In the early 1880s, Charilaos Trikoupis, then Prime Minister of Greece, commissioned him to design the railway network of Thessaly, a recently annexed region lacking railway infrastructure. De Chirico relocated to Volos, which became the operational centre for the Thessaly Railways. He designed and supervised the construction of Volos railway station and other key infrastructure projects. Construction began in 1882, employing Italian and local workers. The Volos–Larissa line, spanning, was inaugurated on 22 April 1884, by King George I. A second branch, extending from Velestino to Kalambaka, was completed by 16 June 1886.Later projects and legacy
Following the completion of the main metric-gauge lines, De Chirico was tasked with constructing a 600 mm narrow-gauge railway in the mountainous Pelion region. The Pelion railway, which featured two tunnels and nine bridges, was built by his own company’s workers. One of these structures remains known as the De Chirico Bridge. Due to his professional responsibilities, De Chirico moved to Athens, where his second son, Andrea, was born in 1891. In 1899, he relocated his family permanently to Athens to oversee railway projects in Thessaloniki, where he had been appointed supervisor. He died in Athens in 1905 due to health complications. Later, his son Giorgio de Chirico wrote he had been in poor health.Family
He was the son of Sicilian barone Giorgio Filigone di Chirico and Countess Adelaide Mabilli y Bulini. His maternal grandfather, Don Lorenzo Eliondoro Mabilli y Bulini, was the Spanish consul in Corfu and originally from Alicante.He married Gemma Cervetto, Genoese baroness of Greek origins from Smyrna, with whom he had three children: a daughter who did not survive and two sons—painter Giorgio de Chirico and writer Andrea de Chirico.