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| Home - City Guide - Athens - City Overview | ||
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City Overview Athens (Athina) named after Athena the goddess of wisdom, who, according to legend, won the city after defeating Poseidon in a duel. Athena's victory was celebrated by the construction of a temple on the Acropolis - the site of the city's earliest settlement. As a city state, Athens reached its heyday in the fifth century BC. The office of the statesman Pericles, between 461BC and his death in 429BC, saw an unprecedented spate of construction resulting in many of the great classical buildings - the Parthenon, Erechtheion, Hephaisteion and the temple at Sounion - now regarded as icons of ancient Greece. Physical evidence of the city's success was matched by achievements in the intellectual arts: democracy was born, drama flourished and Socrates conceived the foundations of Western philosophy. Remarkably, although the cultural legacy of this period has influenced Western civilisation ever since, the classical age in Athens lasted for only five decades. Under the Macedonians and Romans the city retained a privileged cultural and political position but became a prestigious backwater of the Empire rather than a major player. The birth of Christianity heralded a long period of occupation and decline culminating in 1456 in four centuries of Turkish domination, which has left an indelible cultural mark on the city. By the end of the eighteenth century Athens was also suffering the indignity of having the artistic achievements of its classical past removed by looting collectors. Modern Athens was born in 1834, when the city was restored as the capital of a newly independent Greece. Greek refugees flooded the city at the end of the Greek-Turkish war, swelling the city's population, and after World War II American money funded a massive expansion and industrialisation programme. The rapid growth of the post-war years, and the high temperatures, have created a city that can often be polluted, and could be described as an urban sprawl. Excessive traffic creates a gridlock on the streets of Athens and noxious fumes (nÉfos) in the city's air, though great efforts are being made to reduce this, especially with the world's spotlight focussing on Athens for the 2004 Olympic Games. Visitors with visions of gleaming marble and philosophers in white robes are understandably perturbed that the architectural achievements of Athens' classical past are surrounded by the unforgiving concrete of indiscriminate twentieth-century urbanisation. Over three million visitors come to the city each year but the majority see the sights as quickly as possible, as if fulfilling some cultural duty, before heading off for the easy hedonism of the Greek islands. However, Athens repays closer acquaintance. In addition to the celebrated classical sites, the city boasts Byzantine, medieval and nineteenth-century monuments, one of the best museums in the world and areas of surprising natural beauty. Despite the traffic, an appealing village-like quality becomes evident in the cafÉs, tavernas and markets, and the maze of streets around the Pláka. Moreover, Athens has the finest restaurants and the most varied nightlife in the country, and remains a major European centre of culture, celebrated each year at the Athens Festival. The metropolitan area, including the port at Piraeus is the indisputable industrial and economic powerhouse of the country and the return of the Olympic Games is prompting a flurry of new development. |
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