The construction of the Athens Hilton was eventful, and the issue of building code violations has long been a subject of discussion in newspaper columns. It also garnered particular attention from the technical community and most historians of modern Greek art and architecture. However, one aspect of the Hilton that received widespread acclaim was the engravings by painter Yannis Moralis on the two blind sides of the building. These are two massive incised compositions, each covering an area of 626 m² (height 38.90 m x width 16.10 m). According to art historian Fani-Maria Tsigakou, Moralis’s work for the Athens Hilton made a significant impact and expanded the scope of collaboration between architecture and art.

In August 1962, when the scaffolding was removed from the north wall and the engraved composition on the marble from Ioannina was revealed, Byzantinologist Marinos Kalligas (1906-1985) described it as “a light and modest ornament” on a building of catastrophic scale for the Athenian landscape. Kalligas praised the artist’s boldness in confronting the vast surfaces and engaged in the practice of comparing the Hilton to the Parthenon, something quite common at the time. He identified analogies between the engravings of Moralis’ artwork and the tensions in the Parthenon’s columns.

Art critic Angelos Prokopiou situates Moralis’ work within an ancient Greek tradition of decorative fresco painting, which began when “the architects Iktinos, Kallikrates and Mnisiklis collaborated with the sculptor Phidias and the painters Polygnotos and Mikonas” during the construction of the Parthenon. Prokopiou was a strong advocate for the coexistence of architecture and the fine arts, believing that this fusion held a visual and rhetorical power that every private or public building should convey.