More adventurous-minded visitors to the Greek capital, Athens, have long been drawn to the Exarcheia neighbourhood for its reputation as a graffiti-scarred den of anarchism, an edgy alternative to the Acropolis.

Since 2015, they have been joined by refugees and migrants from Asia, the Middle East and Africa –taking up residence in abandoned buildings converted into squats by political activists due to a lack of space in state accommodation.

Now, Greece’s new conservative government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis says it wants to clean up Exarcheia, depicting the district as rife with criminality. Since August, police have conducted a wave of evictions, turfing out around 500 migrants and refugees, many of them families.

The evictions have played well with a part of the ruling New Democracy’s conservative support base, but critics see a more cynical motive behind the drive to get to grips with Exarcheia.