The Sechiari family (Greek: , Sekiaris) is a dynasty of the Greek merchant nobility originating from the island of Chios. It is ranked among the Families of the Twenty (Greek: ), the twenty most eminent families of Chiote aristocracy, in Philip Argenti's Libro d'Oro de la Noblesse de Chio. It is also classified among the Phanariotes in Mihail-Dimitri Sturdza's Dictionnaire historique et généalogique des grandes familles de Grèce, d'Albanie et de Constantinople.
First documented in Chios in 1629, the family established commercial and banking houses in Marseille, the Danubian Principalities, England, Calcutta, and New Zealand, before and after 1821. In a confidential report submitted to Baring Brothers in 1860, which ranked all Greek commercial houses in the City of London, the firm Argenti Sechiari & Co. was placed in the top tier (first rate), with a capital estimated at "at least £500,000 sterling".
In the nineteenth century, the Sechiari played a significant role in the modernisation of Romania: in 1871, the banking house Sechiari Rodocanachi et Deroussi subscribed 4,200,000 lei to the first major Romanian state loan for railway construction, representing 5.4% of the total offer.Telegraphulŭ de Bucuresci, Seria 1, 4 August 1871, no. 101, list of subscriptions to the state loan of 78 million lei.
Through maternal lines, the Sechiari are directly at the origin of two of the most prominent Chiote merchant dynasties: the Ralli Brothers and the Argenti house.
Origins From Modena to Genoa According to the Libro d'Oro, the Sechiari family is "of Italian origin and probably from the city of Modena."
Philip Argenti proposed that the name Sechiari may be a Turkish deformation of Zaccaria — the Genoese family that exercised sovereign lordship over Chios in the fourteenth century, before the Maona of Chios and Phocaea, and of which no trace is found in Greece after that period. Members of the Zaccaria dynasty held titles including kings of Asia Minor and ruling princes of Achaia. Argenti cited several genealogists specialising in Greek noble families in support of this theory: "it may well be that the family name Sechiari is nothing other than a deformation of the true disappeared name", which he suggested could be "the transcription into Turkish of the name Zaccaria."Philip Argenti, Libro d'Oro de la Noblesse de Chio, London, 1955. If this hypothesis is correct, the Sechiari would descend from the former sovereign lords of the island.
Settlement in Chios Chios was administered by the Genoese from 1346 to 1566 under the Maona of Chios and Phocaea. Several families of Genoese and Italian origin settled there permanently, forming alliances with established Byzantine Greek families. From 1566, Chios became a privileged province of the Ottoman Empire.
The earliest documented mention of the Sechiari in Chios dates to 1629: the name of Pantaleon Sechiari appears in the codex of the Latin bishopric of the island. In 1636, the same codex records Jean Sechiari and his wife Angèle.
Noble Status Families of the Twenty The Sechiari belong to the Twenty (Greek: ), the official designation of the twenty most noble families of Chios as established in the Libro d'Oro de la Noblesse de Chio. The Libro d'Oro states that they "were always regarded in Chios as a noble and very ancient family."
Phanariote Status The Sechiari are classified among the Phanariotes — Christian Orthodox families heirs to Byzantine aristocracy gravitating around the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople — by Mihail-Dimitri Sturdza, who notes that "their documented lineage goes back to the end of the seventeenth century, but their prominence dates from later, thanks to a fortune displayed with profusion, derived from the revenues of the trading posts and banking houses established in Marseille, in the Romanian principalities and in England, well before 1821."
Archontes of Chios The Sechiari belong to the Chiote aristocracy designated under the term of archontes, the notable families who governed the island under Ottoman administration. The family is cited among the great families of the Chian diaspora by the municipality of Chios. A street in the town of Chios bears the family name.
Arms Azure, three bars argent accompanied by ten mullets of five points of the same, placed 1, 3, 4, 2. Supporters: two leopards counter-rampant, proper. Helmet: in profile with four bars. Mantling: argent and azure.
The arms of the Sechiari are documented in the academic monograph Chios dicta est... et in Aegæo sita mari (Archaeopress, Oxford, 2021), which reproduces several photographs taken at the Kampos of Chios, notably at the Casino Sechiari (pl. 8a) and the Sechiari estate (pl. 20b). The journal The Coat of Arms of the Heraldry Society noted that the arms of the Sechiari, Schilizzi, and Vouro families share a similar structure, "probably attesting to a kinship between these families."
History Eighteenth Century An Itinerary of the Patriarch of Jerusalem Chrysanthos, who visited Chios in May 1725, records among the benefactors of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre Savas and Paraskevas Sechiari, as well as Marouka, wife of Christopoulis Sechiari and sister of the Metropolitan of Adrianople Clement. Several Sechiari were established in Constantinople and are recorded from 1778 to 1862 among the most distinguished members of the Chiote community of that city.
Massacre of Chios (1822) In 1822, in reprisal against the Greek insurrection, Ottoman forces carried out the Chios massacre. According to the Libro d'Oro, some family members perished: Paraskevas Sechiari "was taken hostage and hanged in 1822 by the Turks, along with Christopoulis Sechiari, known above all for his fortune."
Paraskeva Sechiari, patriarch of the surviving branch, escaped from Chios with his sons, reaching Syros and then Marseille.Lys de Provence, no. 6, 1st quarter 1984, ISSN 0753-8162, pp. 1–9. In July 1822, the Sechiari sons — including Étienne and Hippas — were among the first Chiote children to enrol in the school opened in Marseille for refugees from the island.
Commercial and Banking Network Within a few decades, the Sechiari established one of the most geographically extensive commercial houses of the Greek diaspora. Historians Maria-Christina Chatziioannou and Gelina Harlaftis describe the firm as exemplifying the model of the "great Greek firm": a transnational structure integrating commerce, maritime transport, and banking. The firm Argenti Sechiari & Co. operated offices in Manchester (Peter Street), London (Finsbury Circus), Marseille, Calcutta, and New Zealand, where Sechiari Bros. and Co. appeared among the agents of the Commercial Union Assurance Company.Cyclopedia of New Zealand, vol. Otago & Southland, pp. 521–522.
The British census of 1841 records Stephen Sechiari (aged 25) residing at Finsbury Circus with his brothers Ambrose and John, within the cluster of Chiote merchant houses — Ralli at no. 26, Argenti and Rodocanachi at neighbouring addresses."Finsbury Circus Greek Merchants", prestwich.org.uk, from the British census of 1841. These families revolved around the Baltic Exchange and Lloyd's of London, the principal centres of world maritime trade.
In the confidential report submitted to Baring Brothers in 1860, which classified all Greek firms in the City of London into four tiers of financial credibility, Argenti, Sechiari & Co. was placed in the top tier (first rate), with the notation: "Capital at least 500,000 sterling pounds." The fortune of Baring Brothers themselves was then estimated at two million pounds, and that of the Rothschilds at eight million. The nine Chiote houses in the top category collectively represented a financial weight comparable to that of the Rothschilds.
Theodore Sechiari (1817–1885), head of the London firm Sechiari Brothers, is recurrently listed in the Lloyd's Register of Shipping as one of the major ship charterers of his era, controlling, in coordination with the Chios network, a substantial share of Black Sea grain exports to Western European markets.
The archives of the Lloyd's Register also document a transition toward maritime finance and insurance. Parasqueva Sechiari served as co-liquidator of the Archangel Marine Insurance Company in the 1880s, and the family invested in steam-powered vessels at the turn of the twentieth century, including the SS Ariadne in 1904. In 1908, G. P. Sechiari served as a director of the Imperial Russian Cotton and Jute Factory, Limited, at 19 Cullum Street, London EC.Stock Exchange Year-Book, 1908, cited in Graces Guide to British Industrial History.
The continuity of the house into the Second World War is attested by correspondence held at the Churchill Archives Centre, Churchill College, Cambridge, under the reference GBR/0014/SPRS 3/1/33: exchanges dated 1945–1946 between the Spears family and the stockbrokers Argenti, Sechiari and Company.Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge, reference GBR/0014/SPRS 3/1/33. Available at: archivesearch.lib.cam.ac.uk/repositories/9/archival_objects/482107.
Role of the Sechiari in the Major Chiote Dynasties The two most prominent Chiote merchant dynasties of the nineteenth century were directly linked to the Sechiari by blood. The mother of the celebrated Ralli Brothers was Julia Sechiari. The mother of Ambroise Argenti (1804–1871), founder of the house Argenti Sechiari & Co., was Marouko Sekiari, sister of Julia Sechiari.Chatziioannou and Harlaftis, Centres and Peripheries in Banking, Ashgate, 2007, p. 31: "his mother Marouko Sekiari was sister to the mother of the famous Ralli Brothers, Julia Sechiari." Both houses that dominated Greek global commerce in the nineteenth century — Ralli Brothers, with a fortune estimated at £1.8 million in 1860, and Argenti Sechiari & Co. — thus descended, through their respective founders, from Sechiari mothers.
Historic Properties in Chios In the city of Chios, the Sechiari resided in the Engremos and Apletaria quarters. In the Kampos of Chios, they held several properties near Vasileioniakos, where their church of Saint George of the Sechiari was located. They also possessed a Casino — an aristocratic club reserved for the island's notables — as well as properties adjacent to those of the Argenti and Carali families. At least seven distinct properties formerly belonging to the Sechiari in the Kampos have been documented by historians Zolotas, Smith, and Mastorakis.Agiannidis, Vasilis, "La famille Sekiaris", Aplotaria.gr, 16 March 2016.
Sekiari House of Patmos In the Chora of Patmos, a historic residence has borne the family name since its construction in 1799 by Zannis Sinetos Sekiaris, a wealthy merchant who merged three pre-existing buildings into a single property. The Sekiari House underwent a complete restoration in recent years; the renovation was covered by The New York Times and Elle Decor.Elle Decor, November 2025; The New York Times, 2023.
Family Branches Marseille Branch After 1822, the family settled in Marseille, where it played a founding role in the life of the Greek Orthodox community. Georges Sechiari (born 14 May 1803 in Chios; died 30 September 1884 in Marseille), administrator of the Caisse d'Épargne de Marseille,Archives de la Chambre de Commerce et d'Industrie Aix-Marseille-Provence (CCIMP), Fonds du Grand Négoce, dossier Sechiari-Argenti. represents the Marseille anchor of the family. His brother Étienne Sechiari (1806–1876) was among the founding members and benefactors of the Greek Orthodox Church of the Dormition, the oldest Orthodox church in France. The family is also mentioned in the archives of the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of Paris.Parochial archives of the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of Paris.
The Marseille branch is currently represented by Emmanuel Sechiari (born 1947), son of Alberte de Campou de Grimaldi-Régusse, and his wife Sabine Bretteville (born 1954).