GREECE IS_ATHENS_2023_2024

ISSUE #58 | WINTER 2023-2024 TA K E Y O U R F R E E C O P Y

T R A V E L , C U LT U R E , G A S T R O N O M Y & M O R E

Athens

PA RT H E N O N M A R B L E S : W H AT ’ S T H E L AT E ST ?

FA R E W E L L TO A L EG E N D : M A R I A C A L L A S R E M E M B E R E D T H E H I D D E N A R C H A EO LO G I STS O F AT H E N S

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BY GIORGOS TSIROS

EIGHTY THREE PERCENT of you reading this magazine during your visit to Athens will make your way up to the Acropolis Hill to marvel at this ancient world wonder.

Fifty-six percent have selected Athens for its archaeological sites and rich cultural appeal.

Regrettably, only one in four will spend time enjoying a musical or theatrical performance, and a mere one in five will engage in an organized walking tour, an activity that could greatly enhance your understanding of the city’s historical and societal fabric.

This data comes from the annual Tourist Satisfaction Survey conducted by GBR Consulting for the Athens - Attica and Argosaronic Hotel Association. Among other findings, the survey reaffirms that culture is the strongest suit of the Greek capital: satisfaction with the cultural options on offer scored an impressive 9.1 out of 10. This high rating is a key reason why Athens has been named the

World’s Leading Cultural City Destination by the World Travel Awards for two years in a row.

We wholeheartedly encourage you to explore the current cultural offerings. This winter is packed with fascinating temporary exhibitions of both ancient and contemporary art, offering insights into lesser-known facets of Athens’ history and creativity. Notable exhibitions include “Urbanography” at the National Gallery and “What If Women Ruled the World,” a significant showcase of female artists at the National Museum of Contemporary Art. In other news, as we enter 2024, Athens greets a new mayor who needs to address a number of areas of concern, particularly those where the city scores low with visitors, such as accessibility and the cleanliness of streets and sidewalks.

There’s also a push towards more sustainable tourism development, leading to a new plan that includes setting limits, such as two months per year, on short-term rentals, and incentivizing the transformation of unused industrial spaces into accommodation facilities. On page 44, you’ll find a comprehensive overview of the pressing topics currently engaging us Athenians, helping you feel even more connected to our city.•

© LOUISA GOULIAMAKI/APF/VISUALHELLAS.GR

BU Y T H E T IC K E T, TA K E T H E R I DE

CONTENTS G R EEC E I S — I S S UE#58 — WINTER 2023-2024

12 | CIT Y BR I E F From mythic exhibits to modern vibes: Our editors’ pick of what the city has to offer this season.

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38 | I NSIDE I N FOR M AT ION Six creative Athenians offer their own tips 44 | TA L K OF T H E TOW N The main issues on the Athenian agenda as the year changes.

54 | AT H E NS CL A S SIC S Find your feet in a city that’s perfect for walking and uncover everything from ancient trails to contemporary landmarks and meeting places.

72 | HOT ST U FF! Some of the best casual eateries in the city, handpicked by the team of Gastronomos, the top food magazine in Greece.

I N DEP T H 94 | PA RT H E NON U PDAT E The decades-long campaign for the return of the Parthenon Sculptures from the British Museum to Athens has never been more active.

122 102 | T H E NOT ION OF “BR IT ISH N E S S” How the Parthenon Sculptures became an element of English nationalism.

108 | DECODI NG T H E CIT Y Director of the National Gallery and “Urbanography” curator Syrago Tsiara, on the vision behind this fascinating exibition that sheds light on the post-war evolution of Athens.

114 | M A RY, M A R I A N NA , M A R I A Inspired by a moving documentary presented by the Greek National Opera, we learn more about Maria Callas’ early years in Athens.

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LUXURY GREEK DESIGNERS ATHENS Valaoritou 15, 10671 T: +30 210 3638573

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CONTENTS

72 122 | OPER A’S DE F I N I NG DI VA Maria Callas and her brief career remain beacons of artistic integrity and profundity.

130 | T H E HIDDE N A RCH A EOLOGISTS OF AT H E NS By collecting long-forgotten archaeological data, a new project reveals the researchers who toiled unrecognized.

138 | T H E A NCI E N T M A R BL E ROA D We trace the path of ancient marble from Davelis Cave on Mt Pendeli to the slopes of the Acropolis for the construction of the Parthenon.

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ON THE COVER

Block VI of the Parthenon’s North Frieze, depicting four male water carriers (“hydriaphoroi”), on display at the Acropolis Museum in Athens.

Photo: Socratis Mavrommatis

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S Y N TA G M A • KO LO N A K I • K I F I S S I A • N O TO S • T H E M A L L AT H E N S N E W S T O R E S • K A N A R I 1 7 AT H E N S • AT H E N S A I R P O R T

WELCOME

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A detail from the Meidias Hydria, an Attic red-figure masterwork dated from around 420 BC.

From mythic exhibits to modern vibes: Our editors’ pick of what the city has to offer this season.

BY THE GREECE-IS TEAM AT H E N S

© THE TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM

City brief

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WELCOME

© ROBERT A. MCCABE

The Meidias Hydria: The Homecoming of a Revered Relic

AS THE DUST SETTLES FOLLOWING the recent diplomatic

spat between Greece and the UK over the fate of the Parthenon Sculptures (see p. 94), the Acropolis Museum in Athens has launched a brand-new exhibition that features a renowned ancient Greek water jug (hydria) from 420 BC, on loan from the British Museum.

Described by German art historian and Hellenist Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-1768) as “the finest and most beautiful drawing in the world,” the well-preserved hydria is considered a masterpiece of the Athenian Meidias Painter, a specialist of the redfigure technique. The pot, just over 50cm in height, is richly decorated with mythological scenes, including finely drawn representations of the Dioskouri (Gemini twins) Castor and Pollux, the divine hero Heracles, and Aphrodite, the goddess of love and union.

Excavated in southern Italy, the hydria was purchased in 1764 by Sir William Hamilton (1730-1803),

the British Commissioner to the Kingdom of Naples, and came into the possession of the British Museum in 1772. It quickly became a centerpiece in the museum’s galleries of ancient Greece and a style icon of the 18th and 19th centuries, influencing tapestries, furniture, and the antiquity-inspired ceramics of Josiah Wedgwood (1730-1795). It is the first time in 250 years that the Meidias Hydria has left London, on temporary loan to the “NoHMATA (Meanings): Personifications and Allegories from Antiquity to Today” exhibition at the Acropolis Museum, which runs until April 14, 2024. What is most intriguing about the Meidias Hydria is its link to the Parthenon Sculptures. “Ηydriai of this kind – richly decorated, often with golden leaves – were not vases for everyday use,” notes Professor Nikolaos Chr. Stampolidis, General Director of the Acropolis Museum and curator of the exhibition. “These large water vessels would have been used in the various purification rituals and sacrifices, performed in honor of the patron goddess Athena, and are clearly depicted in a section of the 160-meterlong Parthenon frieze, carried on the shoulders by a group of young men in the Panathenaic Procession. Furthermore, the Meidias Hydria is almost contemporary with the Parthenon, which was completed just before the start of the Peloponnesian War in 431 BC, a lengthy conflict between Athens and Sparta.”

Indeed, art historians have noted that the “flying drapery” style of the female figures, as depicted on the hydria, was especially popular in the last quarter of the 5th century BC, in the aftermath of a devastating plague and the ongoing hardship of war; it was aptly described by Jerome J. Pollitt as “escapism in times of crisis.” duncan howitt-marshall → Turn page for more on the exhibition.

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The richly decorated Meidias Hydria was discovered in southern Italy and purchased by British diplomat Sir William Hamilton in 1764.

AT H E N S

© THE TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM

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WELCOME

A statue of Pothos, 330 AD, Musei Capitolini.

NoHMATA (Meanings): Personifications and Allegories from Antiquity to Today.

AS I ENTER THE AREA dedicated

to temporary exhibitions at the Acropolis Museum, I’m greeted almost immediately by a painting of Kronos (Time), depicted here as an elderly man. He is shown in a stooped position, gruesomely devouring a child's flesh. Next to this striking large-scale work by Rubens, there is a glass display case with four delicate porcelain miniatures from the 1750 Meissen workshop, beautifully representating the four seasons.

The stark contrast in size between the miniatures and the large painting offers a poignant reflection on the relativity of time.

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City brief Eros and Psyche,

by Jacopo Zucchi, 1589, Galleria Borghese.

AT H E N S

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WELCOME

“In every corner of the exhibition NoHMATA (Meanings): Personifications and Allegories from Antiquity to Today, we aimed to highlight the intellectual element that interconnects the artifacts,” says Professor Nikolaos Chr. Stampolidis, General Director of the Acropolis Museum and curator of the exhibition. Organized into six sections (Time, Nature, Deities, Human, Institutions and Allegories) and featuring 164 exhibits, half of which have been loaned for the first time from such renowned museums as the Musei Capitolini in Rome, the British Museum, the Kunsthistoriches Museum in Vienna, and the Prado Museum, the exhibition reveals how the personifications of ideas and the symbolism in each 1 8 — GREECE IS

depiction are enduring themes that run through the entire continuum of art. Stampolidis has disclosed that preparing the exhibition was an endeavor spanning nearly 50 years. (He was in his third year of his archaeology studies when he first encountered the ways in which concepts, emotions, deities, and institutions were represented, either in human or animal forms.) The exhibition showcases statues, vases, paintings, reliefs, coins, manuscripts, books, and paintings, all remarkable works from various epochs.

It vividly captures the human quest to assign definite shapes and to understand the intangible (feelings and concepts), the unreachable (celestial bodies), and the uncontrollable (the elements of nature).

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City brief

Four Seasons, Yiannis Tsarouchis, 1968-69, from a private collection.

The walls of the exhibition space, colored deep purple, add drama and theatricality to the atmosphere and provide a uniform background against which the diversity of the exhibits is made even clearer.

The thoughtful arrangement of the items – some mounted on walls or in cases, and others, including statues or vases, placed freely around the room – adds to the sense that you are exploring the gallery, not merely viewing it. “The layout of the exhibition is intricately woven, allowing sections or subsections to seamlessly blend into one another, and we’ve also crafted diagonal visual escapes. For instance, in the Nature section, as you gaze upon the statue of Selene, your view naturally extends to Eros and Desire,” says

Stampolidis. As to whether the personification of concepts was influenced by the gender of the word describing them, the director says “That did occur frequently, but it was not a strict rule. For example, the two statues from the Archaeological Park of Ostia, representing Spring [a feminine word in both Ancient and Modern Greek] and Winter [a masculine word in both Ancient and Modern Greek] are both portrayed as young males. This reflects the artistic freedom that can weave together multiple layers of intellectual meaning, resonating not just with the artist’s vision but also with the society of that era.” xenia georgiadou → Until 14/04/2024, theacropolismuseum.gr AT H E N S

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IN 1923, JUST OVER A CENTURY AGO , the English-speaking world was introduced to the poetry of C.P. Cavafy (1863-1933) for the first time through the translations of E.M. Forster. Cavafy, who was both born and died in the Egyptian city of Alexandria on April 29, became a pivotal figure in revitalizing Western poetry through these translations. His works, recited by figures ranging from Sean Connery to Laurie Anderson, often begin with vignettes from history, weaving them with irony, cynicism, and sensitivity to comment on themes like the unpredictability of the future, homosexual desire, and the integrity of character.

His extensive archive, owned by the Onassis Foundation, is now housed in a beautifully restored neoclassical building in the historic Plaka district.

Visitors can immerse themselves in the world of his personal belongings, including his signature round glasses and artworks that reference or are inspired by him. panagiotis koustas → cavafy.onassis.org/ → Until 31/03/2024 2 0 — GREECE IS

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© PINELOPI GERASIMOU, STELIOS TZETZIAS

Inside Cavafy’s World

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WELCOME

“A Day That Changed the World”

THE BATTLE OF CHAERONEA (August 2, 338 BC), fought on the northern plain of Boeotia between the armies of Philip II of Macedon and a coalition of city-states led by Thebes and Athens, was one of the most critical turning points in ancient Greek history. Not only did Philip’s decisive victory establish Macedonia as the dominant power in Greece, heralding the start of the transition from the Classical to the Hellenistic period, but it also marked the dramatic appearance of the young 18-year-old prince Alexander, a man who would go on to become one of history’s greatest and most successful military commanders, to the world stage.

In a brand-new exhibition at the Museum of Cycladic Art, visitors can explore this watershed battle and the remarkable story of Philip II and his son, Alexander the Great, through 260 archaeological objects from 25 Greek museums, two foreign museums and four private collections. The exhibition is part of the new “Human Histories” series hosted in the neoclassical Stathatos Mansion. Curated

by Panagiotis Iossif and Ioannis Fappas, the series will explore pivotal events that shaped the course of human history. duncan howitt-marshall

Right: Copper statuette of Alexander, 1780, Museum of Philhellenism. Above, “The Marble Lion of Chaironeia,”338 BC. 2 2 — GREECE IS

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THE LION OF CHAERONEA, POLYANDRION OF THE THEBAN SACRED BAND © HELLENIC MINISTRY OF CULTURE AND SPORTS/EPHORATE OF ANTIQUITIES OF BOEOTIA/DMNAM

→ cycladic.gr → Until 14/04/2024

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A Brush with Brilliance AT THE BASIL AND ELISE GOULANDRIS FOUNDATION , visitors can admire the little dancer of Degas, the troubadour of Giorgio de Chirico, nudes by Picasso, and the splendid “L’Espagnole” by Kees van Dongen. The collection of this small yet outstanding museum, which first opened in 2019, spans the entire spectrum of modern and contemporary art from the mid-19th to the late 20th century. Across four floors displaying 324 works – paintings, sculptures, drawings, and constructions – visitors are introduced to the artistic explorations and achievements of the major movements of modernism, both pre-war and post-war. The museum also hosts exceptional temporary exhibitions, such as the current “Neo-Impressionism in the Colours of the Mediterranean (1891-1914),” featuring works by Paul Signac, Henri-Edmond Cross ( his “The Farm – Evening” is shown here), Henri Matisse, and Maximilien Luce, among others. The exhibition is being held in partnership with major museums such as the National Gallery in London and the Centre Pompidou, the Musée d’Orsay and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. xenia georgiadou → goulandris.gr → From 10/01 to 07/04/2024

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WELCOME

Chryssa Romanos Serigraphy from the folio Some Pages from a Diary, 1973.

What If Women Ruled the World?

THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART is actively redefining

the narrative around women in art, who are traditionally seen more as muses and models than as creators. This transformative initiative mines the museum’s permanent collection to exclusively showcase works by female artists, while also hosting temporary exhibitions of trailblazing Greek women. Until April 21, 2024, the museum’s lower level will feature the works of Leda Papaconstantinou (born 1945), a pioneer of feminist art in 2 6 — GREECE IS

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A r c het y p a l J ewel r y B or n i n A t he n s, I n s pi r e d b y G r e e k My t holo g y & A r t FLAGSHIP STORE 5 Limpona Street, Athens, 105 60 Phone: +3021 1418 4195 | customercare@herminaathens.com herminaathens.com | IG @herminaathens

Greece and an internationally acclaimed performance artist. The retrospective “Time in my Hands” includes her sculptures, videos, paintings, site-specific installations, and rare photographs from her performances, illustrating her influence on later generations of artists.

The artwork of Chryssa Romanos (19312006), a significant figure among post-war Greek diaspora painters engaged in the art centers of the West, is on display on the fourth floor until October 27. Curated by Dimitris Tsoumplekas and Eleni Koukou, the exhibit “The Search for Happiness for as Many as Possible” spotlights her 1960s collages, decollages, and her iconic MEKANO – the wooden structures that marked a significant chapter in Greek art.

In the same space and until the same date, there’s also the exhibition “D-Possessions”

by Belgian-Greek artist Danai Anesiadou.

With a blend of humor and hyperbole and drawing from diverse influences including B-movies, surrealism, fake news, and Greek archaeology, Anesiadou challenges prevailing discourses, positing the existence of multiple truths. xenia georgiadou

The cast of Leda Papaconstantinou’s play Bouboulitsa’s Dream, 1979 Spetses Players, Kapodistrian House of Spetses.

→ emst.gr

Installation view, Danai Anesiadou, D POSSESSIONS, 2023 at WielsContemporary Art Centre, Brussels (front to back): Ambiguous Angles, 2023; Vacuum, 2023.

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©COURTESY OF DANAI ANESIADOU PHOTO: WE DOCUMENT ART - COURTESY OF LEDA PAPACONSTANTINOU. PHOTO: DIMITRIS PAPADIMAS

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C LASSY

WineArtEstate.com

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The Many Lives of Kary tsi Square NESTLED NEAR KLAFTHMONOS SQUARE , charming Karytsi Square is a hidden

© ARIS KAMAROTOS

gem. Named after the aristocratic Karykis family – prominent during the period of Ottoman rule and the original landowners of the area – the square is steeped in history. Between 18461849, the family financed the construction of Saint George Karytsis Church, erected on the site of a Byzantine church built by their ancestors in the 11th century. The church underwent renovations in 1900, around which time the square was created. Karytsi Square is home to “Parnassos,” the country’s oldest literary society, which has been continuously active since 1865.

Its grand hall has welcomed figures such as Eleftherios Venizelos, Winston Churchill, and Sir Arthur Evans. During the Occupation in 1943-44, it served as a German military court.

Saint George Karytsis Church, at the heart of the square.

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The Mousouri Theater, opposite “Parnassos,” is one of the oldest theaters in Athens, in operation since 1934, and a platform for top Greek actors such as Elli Lambeti and Dimitris Horn.

The surrounding streets, Christou Lada and Anthimou Gazi, historically hosted print shops and newspaper offices, making the square a hub for members of the press. Today, Karytsi Square, at the heart of both old and new Athens, remains a beloved gathering place for locals.

At Bless Me Father (2 Karitsi), patrons can enjoy specialty coffee, delectable dishes for sharing, and a selection of fine Greek wines. Glug Glug (5 Karitsi), a quaint wine bar, offers a curated list of Greek and international wines. The latest culinary addition to the square is Gloria Gati (6 Karitsi), an Italian restaurant famous for its signature dish: sumptuous stuffed handmade cacio e pepe ravioli. myrto katsigera Glug Glug wine bar

At the Italian restaurant Gloria Gati

© ASPA KOULYRA

At the bar Bless Me Father

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City brief

WELCOME

Vlassis

THE INAUGURATION OF THE ARCHITECTURALLY ICONIC HILTON ATHENS

in 1963 heralded a new chapter of cosmopolitan sophistication for Athens, raising the entire area’s social status. Such was its influence that claiming an address “behind the Hilton” became a symbol of prestige, even for those living several blocks away. Recently, the Hilton neighborhood has been undergoing a renaissance, sparked by the comprehensive renovation of the Athens Conservatoire and the grand reopening of the revamped and expanded National Gallery - Alexandros Soutsos Museum. This resurgence is set to reach new heights with the 3 4 — GREECE IS

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© ALEXANDROS ANTONIADIS

Hot tables around Hilton

hotel’s transformation into an opulent city resort, encompassing the Conrad Hotel, the Conrad and Waldorf Astoria Residences, and exclusive new retail, dining, and recreation areas.

The Hilton neighborhood already draws residents and visitors with its many excellent choices for dining: Vlassis (15 Meandrou), known for its mouthwatering seasonal dishes, has been a staple for Greek cuisine since 1983.

Right next door, Aoritis (15 Meandrou) brings traditional Cretan cuisine to life with specialties such as tasty snails, and meats roasted over an open flame. For a blend of Greek creativity and cosmopolitan flair, Cookoovaya (2A Chatzigianni Mexi) serves mainly seafood dishes in an elegant setting.

Make sure to reserve a table and enjoy savory pies from the wood-fired oven and innovative nose-to-tail fish recipes. For meat lovers, Vezene (1 Vrasida) offers a luxurious dining experience with exceptional cuts of meat. A bit further away, Goldie (35 Diocharous, open daily 12:00-17:00) offers freshly prepared, simple and affordable meals. nena dimitriou

Cookoovaya

Vezene

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© ALEXANDROS ANTONIADIS

City brief

WELCOME

Inside INFORMATION CREATIVE ATHENIANS OFFER THEIR OWN TIPS

BY VL ASIS KOS TOUROS

KATERINA DUSKA Singer / Songwriter @katerineduska 1. The Athens Concert Hall, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center and the Onassis Stegi cater to a wide range of musical tastes. There’s so much to explore all year, from classical to experimental, and from local legends to global sensations.

YIANNIS PAPPAS Sommelier / Owner of Gamay Wine Bar @yiannis.pappas 1. Walking around Exarchia, you’ll see fascinating graffiti, including large murals created by notable street artists such as Sonke and Blu. The works at Navarinou Park and Exarchia Square are particularly striking.

1. Culture Destination 2. Only in Athens 3. Night Out 4. Guilty Pleasure 5. Shopping Therapy

2. The most charming farmer’s market in Athens takes place every Saturday on Kallidromiou Street in Exarchia. Check it out and try some of the seasonal produce while listening to the strolling musicians play rebetika music.

3. Vrettos (41 Kidathineon) is over a century old and located in the heart of Plaka. You’ll be drawn immediately by the hundreds of colorfully lit bottles on its shelves. They serve homemade Greek spirits and a wide variety of Greek wines in a unique space.

4. Krepēlateíon in Marousi, a northern suburb, is basically a food truck that makes the best savory and sweet crepes in all of Athens.

It’s open from 6 PM until very late at night and is ideal for when you get the after-hours munchies.

5. Athens has quite a few local designers worth checking out. My personal favorites include Yiorgos Eleftheriades, Milkwhite, Ancient Greek Sandals and Sun of a Beach, all conveniently located in the center of Athens (Syntagma and Kolonaki).

3. Cocktail and electronic music enthusiasts will have a great time at Beauty Killed the Beast (14 Paramithias), located on a beautiful pedestrianized street in Kerameikos. Well-known DJs help create an incredible vibe for an unforgettable night in Athens.

© THANOS POULIMENOS

4. Gallina (49 Markou Botsari) in Koukaki is a brand-new restaurant boasting one of the best wine lists in the city. You might see me there enjoying my favorite dish, chicken with miso and black truffle.

5. I enjoy shopping for pots and plants at Polyamorous (72-74 Mavromichali), a concept store that also sells wines and sex toys! Alexandros and Eleni, the owners, are very helpful and knowledgeable about their products.

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2. Pangrati has quite a few gems when it comes to contemporary Greek cuisine. For fine dining, there’s Vezené (11 Vrasida); their twist on the traditional pastitsio is to die for. Akra (12 Amynta) is another favorite – their menu changes daily but never disappoints.

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Gree

ANTIQUA is an Athens based design gallery specialized in Historical Design and Masterpieces of the 20th century.

From Design Masters of the global marketplace to

Greek artists with an international presence, the gallery celebrates all types and forms of modern antiques from furniture and lighting to ceramics and sculpture.

A: 7, Irodotou str., 106 74, Athens, Greece | www.antiqua.gr | E: antiqua@antiqua.gr | IG: antiqua_gallery

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Inside INFORMATION KALOMIRA PAPAGEORGIOU Jewelry designer / Co-Founder of PRIGIPO Jewelry @prigipo 1. The National Archaeological Museum (44 Patission) is an unmissable destination for those fascinated by ancient craftsmanship. The collection of golden jewelry is particularly breathtaking and, for me, serves as a source of inspiration.

2. Avissinias Square comes alive on Sundays, becoming a haven for vintage enthusiasts. Here, you can find a myriad treasures from Greece’s past, ranging from furniture to cameras, making for an exhilarating treasure hunt.

3. Stepa (61 Asklipiou) , known for its exceptional cocktails, delicious food, and vibrant atmosphere, is a frequent haunt of mine. Located in the Exarchia neighborhood, it’s a versatile spot where you can work during the day and enjoy great music and drinks by night.

4. For a taste of the best Basque cheesecake, head to Amandine’s Bagels (13 Nikis). Their menu also features delectable madeleines and homemade cookies that are sure to linger in your memory for days.

1. Culture Destination 2. Only in Athens 3. Night Out 4. Guilty Pleasure 5. Shopping Therapy

5. At Prigipo, you’ll find handmade jewelry; our new flagship store (34 Kolokotroni) is a gem in its own right.

Afterwards, make your way to Aumorfia (17 Praxitelous), a store where unique designer pieces await discovery.

YIORGOS TRICHAS Ceramist @yiorgostrichas 1. This year’s program for the Central Stage at the National Theater (22 Aghiou Konstantinou) includes performances with English surtitles. It's worth a visit for the Ernst Ziller Building alone, a monumental architectural complex of unique splendor that’s home to Athens’ most beautiful theater hall.

2. Who doesn’t love souvlaki? In Athens, you’ll find plenty of this street delicacy. Perhaps the tastiest (and most upmarket) version is made at Hoocut (9 Aghias Eirinis Square). Be sure to try their pita wrap with finely chopped pieces of beef or lamb.

3. Tucked away in a small but busy pedestrianized street flanked by neoclassical houses, old apartment buildings, and bitter orange trees, the bistro-bar Blue Bird (4 Ipitou) serves great drinks, plays uplifting music, and attracts a flirty crowd.

4. Taverna Oikonomou (32 Kydantidon) in the popular neighborhood of Ano Petralona is a classic spot for those who love traditional Greek cuisine.

5. Nestled in the basement of a renovated ’70s apartment building is 10AM Apotheke (82 Konstantinoupoleos), a truly original concept store. You’ll find everything from monastic candles to ceramic artworks by Greek artists.

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ΣΕ ΜΙΑ ΠΡΑΓΜΑΤΙΚΗ ΟΑΣΗ ΤΗΣ ΑΘΗΝΑΣ, στα όρια της αρχαίας και της σύγχρονης πόλης και με την απόλυτη θέα προς τον ιερό βράχο της Ακρόπολης, βρίσκεται το “THETA”, το all day καφέ-εστιατόριο που δημιουργήσαμε με αγάπη για την ελληνική κουζίνα και με σεβασμό προς την παράδοση. Από την ανατολή του ηλίου, μπορείτε να απολαύσετε τον καφέ σας, συνοδευόμενο από πρωινό ή brunch, να συνεχίσετε με μεσημεριανό και το βράδυ να δοκιμάσετε μοναδικά πιάτα, με γεύσεις από όλη την Ελλάδα. Σας περιμένουμε!

Nothing Better Than the Authentic

IN A REAL OASIS OF ATHENS, on the borders of the ancient and modern city and with the absolute view to Acropolis, there is “THETA”, the all day café-restaurant that we created with love for Greek cuisine and respect for tradition. From sunrise, you can enjoy your coffee accompanied by breakfast or brunch, continue with lunch and in the evening, try unique dishes with flavors from all over Greece.

We look forward to welcoming you!

• • •

Handmade Delights Timeless Tradition quality Guarantee

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Flavor Variety

Made with Love

Αδριανού 11, Αθήνα 105 55 Τηλ.: 210 331 8693 theta-athens.gr info@theta-athens.gr theta.athens theta.athens Adrianou 11, Athina 105 55 Tel.: 210 331 8693 theta-athens.gr info@theta-athens.gr theta.athens theta.athens ΒΙΚΕΛΙΔΗΣ - ΧΡΥΣΑΝΘΙΔΗΣ ΑΒΕE ΒΙΟΜΗΧΑΝΙΑ ΖΑΧΑΡΩΔΩΝ

ΤΗΛ: 2510 361371 Ε-MAIL: info@chrisanthidis.gr shop.chrisanthidis.gr www.chrisanthidis.gr

Inside INFORMATION

IANTHI MICHALAKI Co-Owner Kora Bakery @ianthi.m 1. Visit the Cavafy Archive at its charming new location in Plaka (16B Frinichou).

GAUTIER VELISSARIS Singer / Songwriter @gautier_vel 1. The Acropolis Museum, a marvel of architecture situated right beneath the Acropolis, is a must-visit. Its educational approach allows visitors to immerse themselves in history and fully appreciate the exquisite artifacts on display.

1. Culture Destination 2. Only in Athens 3. Night Out 4. Guilty Pleasure 5. Shopping Therapy

2. Exploring Plaka, especially Anafiotika, is a delight. This quaint neighborhood, nestled beneath the Acropolis and reminiscent of an Aegean village, was built by migrant workers from the island of Anafi. It offers stunning views from its vantage points and is particularly charming in the evening.

3. Enjoy a drink at Santarosa (69 Asklipiou) if you appreciate dimly lit, cozy spots like I do; or savor an excellent cocktail at Line Athens (37 Agathodaimonos), renowned as one of Athens’ most elegant bars.

4. For an exquisite tiramisu, head to the Italian restaurant Alio (34 Vassileos Georgiou, Halandri).

If you’re up for venturing further north, the suburb of Drosia is celebrated for its freshly baked, butter-rich peinirli!

5. Discover the exquisite jewelry creations of Katerina Psoma (35 Apollonos) and stylish clothing featuring geometric motifs at the 2plus1equals2 atelier (26 Akadimias).

3. For live music enthusiasts, Gazarte (34 Voutadon) is a prime destination. This venue hosts established and emerging local and international artists. Visitors can expect high-quality performances in a vibrant atmosphere.

4 Ekiben (15 Skoufou) prepares treats inspired by the Japanese bento railway culture in a compact, elegant space.

Here, you can enjoy delicious meals and buy exclusive spirits and other products imported from Japan. Be sure to book in advance as seating is limited.

5. Nestled within the impressive Athens Concert Hall is M-SHOP, a charming café and music-themed concept store.

It’s just the place to find gifts for music aficionados. Make the most of your visit by taking in one of the outstanding performances held here as well.

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2. Explore the fascinating apartment buildings in Kypseli.

Athens boasts stunning architecture throughout its neighborhoods. Taking a tour with openhouseathens.gr can make for a truly unique exploration.

WINTER 2023-2024

6 Georgiou Karitsi Square, Athens Daily Open 13:00-01:00 For reservations: 2120000022 instagram: gloria.gati facebook: Gloria Gati

Talk of the town B Y D I M I T R I S R I G O P O U LO S

The center of Athens is being excavated again due to the construction works for the new Metro Line 4. The construction site of the new station “Akadimia,” located behind the Athenian Trilogy, is currently in the spotlight.

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© ARIS KAMAROTOS

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© ARIS KAMAROTOS

NEWSWORTHY

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In progress Construction to convert Vasilissis Olgas Avenue into a pedestrianized walkway is ongoing, as is the debate on whether Athens needs more streets for cars or more traffic-free areas for its citizens.

There are more of you now than ever. The number of visitors to Athens who prefer the city in the winter season is increasing dramatically year after year, but thankfully not to the point where they can no longer reap the benefits of their unmistakably wise decision.

You are the fortunate ones who will not have to line up, will not suffer in the heat, and, most importantly, will see the city as it truly is: with more locals on the streets, squares, and shops than in the summer. That’s why we thought it would be interesting to tell you what’s on these people’s minds and what issues are on the Athenian agenda at the end of the year, a year in which Athens has been prominent in local news, sometimes for good reasons, sometimes not so much. So, let’s go find out!

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Vasilissis Olgas Avenue: for pedestrians or cars?

Prior to the pandemic, many Athenians had no idea where Vasilissis Olgas Avenue was. They quickly became familiar with it after the outgoing mayor decided to make it car-free as part of a program to increase public space available to pedestrians. Because it was rarely used, no one paid much attention to the removal of the Athenians’ favorite mode of transportation from the thoroughfare separating the Zappeion Gardens from the Temple of Zeus archaeological site.

When traffic returned to normal after the pandemic, however, drivers realized its utility as traffic jams in front of the Panathenaic Stadium became permanent. In the recent municipal elections, the future of the avenue was at the top of the agenda, and Athenians were treated to a rather paradoxical debate: the more environmentally conscious candidate advocated for its opening to traffic in order to decongest the situation, while the incumbent mayor stuck to his plan for its pedestrianization. He contended that it was a matter of principle and priorities, asking whether the city needs more space for cars or for pedestrians and cyclists. Meanwhile, during the works that had already begun in the summer, archaeological finds were made that will most probably have to be preserved in situ, so the newly elected mayor may be forced to back down.

New mayor in town

When compared to the mayor of the city’s actual authority, municipal elections in Athens elicit a disproportionate amount of attention; after all, important decisions are made by the government. As a result, it has become something of a running joke to say that a “good” mayor is one who “picks up the trash,” which may seem obvious but is not always the case. Outgoing mayor Kostas Bakoyannis hoped to overcome this image with a series of major, visionary projects. “The Grand Walk,” a series of pedestrian paths and bicycle lanes introduced in some of downtown Athens’ central thoroughfares, was the most prominent of these. However, the project proved to be a complete failure, at least in terms of public perception, resulting in Bakoyannis’s defeat in last October's local elections by newcomer Haris Doukas, a Professor of Energy Policy and Management backed by the center-left PASOK party. Doukas made a wise decision by playing the climate crisis card instead of competing with Bakoyannis’s large-scale construction plans. Athens had just experienced the hottest summer in its history, and the previous summer's great fires had destroyed another large portion of Parnitha National Park. Doukas, thanks to his academic background in environmental and energy issues, was able to convince the people of Athens that he could plant 25,000 new trees and cool the city’s hottest neighborhoods by five degrees Celsius.

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SHORT-TERM RENTALS CAME TO ATHENS AT THE HEIGHT OF THE GREEK ECONOMIC CRISIS, AND THE Y PROVED TO BE THE SAVING GRACE FOR THOUSANDS OF STRUGGLING HOUSEHOLDS. WINTER 2023-2024

To Airbnb or not to Airbnb?

Short-term rentals came to Athens at just the right time, in the mid-2010s, at the height of the Greek economic crisis, and they proved to be the saving grace for thousands of struggling households, for whom the most popular rental platform proved to be a valuable source of extra income or, in many cases, their only means of financial survival.

But, just as the worst seemed to be over, the rest of the iceberg emerged: entire neighborhoods, such as Koukaki in the

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A rendering of the design that won the first prize in the architectural competition for the grounds of the new metro station in Rizari Park, by Morpho Papanikolaou of the design office MP Sparch.

shadow of the Acropolis, had become overrun with tourists dragging their luggage from one apartment building to the next. In the space of just a few years, rents went through the roof, and residents were left wondering how long they would be able to survive in these conditions. According to a recent Grant Thornton study, the turnover generated by short-term rentals accounts for 14.41% of Greek tourism. As a result, when the phenomenon spread to the majority of Athens’ neighborhoods, the government, under pressure from hoteliers and an increasingly concerned public, announced a rethinking of the institutional framework, which would include restrictions on the types of residences that could be rented and a cap on the number of rental days per year.

Furthermore, owners of one or two properties will have a different tax status than hosts or companies with more than three listed properties, with the latter being subject to an accommodation fee in the same manner as hotels. Until all this becomes law, there is widespread mistrust, because tourism is regarded as the golden goose of the Greek economy, and you don’t mess with the golden goose.

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Metro vs trees: the new clash

IN FOUR DECADES, THE GREEK CAPITAL HAS LOST MORE THAN A THIRD OF ITS PERI-URBAN FORESTS, CAUSING IRREPARABLE HARM TO THE CIT Y’S ALRE ADY TROUBLED ENVIRONMENTAL PROFILE, BOASTING AS IT DOES EUROPE’S LOWEST RATIO OF GREEN SPACE PER RESIDENT. WINTER 2023-2024

When Athens became one large construction site in the 1990s to enable the creation of the two new metro lines (work on the original overground line began in the 19th century), no one paid attention to the inevitable sacrifices that such an ambitious infrastructure project entailed. Today, however, with construction for Line 4 about to begin, the removal of a few dozen trees in squares and other public spaces has sparked protests among local communities and has divided experts. The sacrifice, so the counterargument goes, is worth it: in a few years, the most environmentally friendly mode of transportation will gain 15 new stations. However, Athens in 1990 bears no resemblance to Athens in 2023. In four decades, the Greek capital has lost more than one-third of its peri-urban forests, causing irreparable harm to the city's already troubled environmental profile, boasting as it does Europe’s lowest ratio of green space per resident. According to the company responsible for the construction of the new line, the trees will be transplanted, but media research has shown that few transplanted trees survive. And as is

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talian cuisine.

joying the beautiful Greek

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NEWSWORTHY

usually the case, after the various works are completed, the trees will have been replaced by impersonal squares with merely decorative greenery. The government has responded by announcing architectural tenders for the main squares through which the new line will pass.

Welcome to the era in which every tree matters.

Images from the near future: a city without cinemas

© VANGELIS ZAVOS

Athens was once one of the European capitals with the highest ratio of movie theaters per capita. This was largely due to the flourishing of popular Greek cinema in the 1950s and 1960s, as well as the late arrival of television sets in Athenian homes (not until the early 1970s). Every neighborhood in the city had its own majestic and prestigious “temples” of popular culture, and the city's hundreds of open-air cinemas were open from Easter to autumn. Almost 90% of these cinemas have since closed,

UNTIL ALL THIS BECOMES L AW, THERE IS WIDESPRE AD MISTRUST, BECAUSE TOURISM IS REG ARDED AS THE GOLDEN GOOSE OF THE GREEK ECONOMY, AND YOU DON’T MESS WITH THE GOLDEN GOOSE .

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been demolished, or been repurposed.

The impact has been far greater in the center of Athens than in the suburbs.

Classic and beloved theaters such as “Attikon” and “Apollon” on Stadiou Street, as well as “Embassy” in Kolonaki, have closed in the last 12 years, and ominous rumors circulate about the few remaining cinemas that are still open. The city’s cinephile community banded together last winter to protest the announced closures of the “Ideal” and “Astor” movie theaters, which are housed in buildings that will most likely be converted into hotels. Many consider the phenomenon to be almost inevitable in the age of digital media and streaming, but to many Athenians, it is yet another symptom of the changing character of their city center. The more pluralistic model of previous decades is being replaced by an extensive zone set aside primarily for tourism purposes, aimed primarily at visitors. Even official voices are now highlighting the risk, but for the time being, we are still in the process of establishing the facts.•

Today, there are only a few movie theaters in the center of Athens.

Pictured here is the classic cinema Attikon, closed since 2012 when the building was set on fire during a demonstration.

Panos Ioannidis one of the Greek Master Chef judges along with Panos Politis of the Italian restaurant Cupola created this unique place and brought fresh Italian air in the very heart of the new hot culinary destination in Athens, Syntagma.

‘Ovio’ which means clear, obvious, represents exactly the “cucina contemporanea”: Creative ideas, clear casual flavors, twisted versions of classic recipes and products coming straight from Italy, in an elegant and stylish place with warm atmosphere and hangout spirit.

Of course, as in every authentic Italian menu, pizza has its

The authentic Italian risotti cooked on demand in Ovio’s cuisine,

own distinctive place. Although Ovio’s pizza with its very flyffy

as well as the fresh pasta are the big stars of the menu. Other

“cornicione” is baked in a traditional ‘closed’ Neapolitan oven

special dishes on the menu are the Greek versions of risotto

and is served in a totally different way! The wine list is very well

kouskousotto (fregola), recipes that chef Ioannidis has proved

studied with more than 80 labels focused especially on the

that he loves equally with the Italian prototype as well as

Italian and then on the Greek vineyard.

smoked beef carpaccio, the very unique Tonno Tonnato, fresh

Don’t miss the cocktails, as Ovio offers a focused menu of

scallops and oysters.

classic and twisted Spritz, Negroni and Martini

4 Apollonos Str., Syntagma, Tel. (+30) 211 4115755 www.facebook.com/ovioathens/ www.instagram.com/ovioathens/

www.ovio.gr/

THE ATHENS Find your feet in a city that’s perfect for walking and uncover everything from ancient trails to contemporary gems.

BY AMBER CHARMEI

© PERIKLES MERAKOS

CLASSICS

The Athenian Trilogy, a trio of Neoclassical buildings at the heart of the city.

AT H E N S

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The Caryatids adorning the Erechtheion.

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© PERIKLES MERAKOS

D OWNTOWN

On Foot

Strolling through the Ancient Agora.

AT H E N S

W WINTER MAY BE ATHENS’ finest season of all. Free of the summer crowds, the vibrant streets reflect the city’s true colors. Athens’ relatively compact urban center is a fascinating study in contrasts – ancient monuments and contemporary art galleries, cosmopolitan elegance and old commercial arcades, street art and high fashion. Wherever you find yourself, you’re never far from a glass of good wine, a sweet treat, or a tempting bite, be it a sit-down meal of modern Mediterranean bistro fare or a true Athenian-style souvlaki wrapped in a pita and enjoyed on the go.

Best of all, though, this is the season when Athenians enjoy their own city the most. The cultural calendar swells with exhibitions, concerts and theatrical performances. Friends meet for coffee under the Attic sun. Antique stores and charming vintage shops are ripe for leisurely browsing. In winter, the city is most truly itself. To help you take full advantage of this quieter season and discover some classic Athens features – what residents adore most about their city – we’ve chosen some destinations for you to explore.

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VISITING THE PARTHENON for the first time is a momentous occasion, al-

Treasure-hunting at Avissinias Square.

ACROPOLIS AREA

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© THALIA GALANOPOULOU

though the same is true for the fifth – or even fiftieth – time. When relative peace descends upon the historic monuments during the cooler months, the early hours of the day reveal its majesty and magic. Purchasing timed tickets in advance through hhticket.gr simplifies things and makes what will be a profound experience easier to access. Licensed tour guides, who can be hired on-site or via tourist-guides.gr, are extremely useful in helping visitors fully comprehend this historical marvel.

Mid-morning finds the district of Koukaki, nestled at the southern foothills of the Acropolis, buzzing with activity. A ritualistic stop at neighborhood landmark Takis Bakery (13 Misaraliotou) for a “kourou” cheese pie (a buttery shortcrust pastry), a quintessential Athenian breakfast treat, is the ideal way to start the day’s adventures.

A leisurely stroll to the Ancient Agora is like embarking on a historical odyssey; you pass iconic locations such as the Acropolis, Areopagus Hill, Filopappou Hill, and the Pnyx. Pedestrianized Dionysiou Areopagitou, named after Athens’ patron saint, is a popular and picturesque thoroughfare. Adjacent shaded paths leading to the Church of Demetrios Loumbardiaris reveal landscaping artistry that seamlessly integrates the walkways with the surrounding natural splendor.

Conceived in the 1950s by visionary architect Dimitris Pikionis, the intricately designed, asymmetrical paving, crafted from repurposed stone, appears to be an organic extension of the landscape – a testament to the mastery of the stonemasons involved.

While the Parthenon captures the majesty of Classical Athens, the Ancient Agora illuminates it in fascinating detail. This was the religious, cultural, social, and commercial center of Athenian life and the seat of politics, administration,

On Foot and justice. Among the many highlights of the large site are the ruins of the Bouleuterion (the 500-member senate, or “Boule”), the Tholos (the Boule’s executive committee), and the Temple of Hephaestus. In use as a Christian place of worship for centuries (beginning in the 7th century and continuing through the Ottoman era as the Church of St. George Akamas), the temple is essentially intact; Otto, the first King of Greece, was welcomed in a ceremony here in 1834.

A licensed guide can add to the experience (tourist-guides.gr).

The Ancient Agora borders one of Athens’ liveliest districts. For many, Monastiraki, or “Little Monastery,” named for a monastic institution of which only the 10th-century Pantanassa basilica remains, is synonymous with second-hand items and antiques, from the cheerful jumble of sidewalk stalls in Avissinias Square to finer pieces at specialist shops. The scent of leather bindings greets you at Korovessis (7 Adrianou), specialists in rare books, maps, and works on paper. Martinos (50 Pandrossou) offers a beautiful selection that includes European antiques, Çanakkale pitchers, Greek fine art, 19th-century Philhellenic collectibles, and 20th- and 21st-century design pieces.

As we approach Athinas Street, Athens’ pleasingly chaotic commercial thoroughfare for baskets, birdcages, and everything else for the home, it may be time for a traditional Greek coffee. Mokka (44 Athinas), a century-old coffee roastery, is just the place. The coffee is prepared in a “briki” – a long-handled copper pot – nestled in hot sand. The Varvakios Central Market, with its clamorous charm, is just steps away and certainly worth a visit (as long as you haven’t worn your best shoes). For a special treat, head towards Syntagma and join the line waiting for souvlaki at Kostas (7 Filellinon), a local favorite since 1950.

A statue gracing the Stoa of Attalos in the Ancient Agora.

Freshly made bread at Takis Bakery in Koukaki.

The cult souvlaki joint Kostas on Filellinon Street.

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The Theater of Dionysos, cited by many as the birthplace of drama.

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Coffee with class

Since a café named Zonar’s first opened here in 1939, this prime spot, now home to Athénée (9 Voukourestiou), has been cherished by generations of distinguished Athenians and visitors. Nobel laureate Odysseas Elytis, the composer Manos Hatzidakis, and icons such as Melina Mercouri and Sophia Loren have all passed through its doors, leaving behind a lasting cultural legacy. Its Art Deco ambiance continues to exude timeless allure, and it remains a favorite haunt of luminaries today. The establishment offers a superb variety of coffees and meals throughout the day. Situated on one of the busiest streets in Athens, this place is perfect for enjoying the rhythm and spirit of the bustling city.

Neoclassic identity

The stretch of the city between Syntagma and Omonia squares is cherished for other reasons as well. Over a few decades in the 19th century, King Otto’s lavish building program transformed what had been a small village into an impressive European capital. Amid the glory of Ancient Athens, Neoclassicism came to represent the nation’s new spiritual and cultural identity. Just steps from Athénée are some of the finest examples of this movement, beginning with the fanciful Illiou Melathron (1879), initially built by Ernst Ziller for Heinrich Schliemann, the archaeologist who combined myth and history in his excavations of Mycenae and Troy (“Illion”), but which now houses the Numismatic Museum (12 Panepistimiou).

A short walk down Panepistimiou Street, past the fine neo-Renaissance Catholic Cathedral of St. Dionysius the Areopagite (Leo von Klenze and Lyssandro Kaftantzoglou), brings us to what is popularly known as the Athenian Trilogy, a photogenic complex consisting of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (the first university in the Balkans and Eastern Mediterranean), the Academy of Athens, and the Vallianeio Megaro (the National Library). The University is the work of Christian Hansen, appointed court architect in 1834, while the Academy and Vallianeio Megaro were designed by his brother, Theophil Hansen. The nearby Ziller Mansion provides a more intimate Neoclassical experience. Now known as the Loverdos Museum (6 Mavromichali), it’s home to one of Greece’s most important collections of post-Byzantine religious art. The frescoes and intricate floor mosaics are as noteworthy as the fine artworks.

AROUND SYNTAGMA

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The Varvakios Central Market.

On Foot On the steps of the Vallianeio Megaro.

The Loverdos Museum, once known as the Ziller Mansion.

Athénée.

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Just around the corner, Politeia (1-3 Asklipiou), a favorite haunt of intellectuals, art lovers and bibliophiles, offers selections on a wide range of subjects and boasts a well-informed staff. Whether you’re looking for a copy of Cavafy in Greek and French, the new Wilson translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey, or a book on modern Greek architecture, you won’t leave empty-handed. If you’d like to browse further, there are plenty of dealers in rare and used books on nearby Solonos and other surrounding streets.

Patron saint, modern master

The Church of Aghios Dionysios Areopagite (Skoufa and Dimokritou) in Kolonaki is modern by Athenian standards; designed by architect and architectural historian Anastasios Orlandos, it dates from 1925. Spyros Vassiliou, one of Greece’s foremost painters of the Generation of the 1930s, painted the works in its interior. Vassiliou is known and adored for works that capture the dreamy essence of Greece; his style was so compelling that he was commissioned to create posters for GNTO, the Greek Tourism Organization, as well. Vassiliou’s works can be seen at the nearby Ghika Gallery, at the Goulandris Foundation (a destination on our next walk), and in the current “Urbanography” exhibition at the National Gallery (until 03.03.2024).

Always in style

Kolonaki was the preferred district for Bavarian courtiers and wealthy Athenians; it remains a popular neighborhood today, with an air of quiet luxury permeating its streets. It’s a short walk from Syntagma Square and the Hellenic Parliament building, originally the royal palace (von Gärtner, 1843). Kolonaki’s past and present come together at the Allouche-Benias Gallery (1 Kanari), one of the city’s leading international contemporary art galleries, housed in Ernst Ziller’s sumptuously restored Deligiorgi Mansion.

Classic tastes still sway in Kolonaki; going out for pâtisserie-style, cream-filled cakes was once very fashionable throughout the city, and this tradition lives on at the pleasingly retro Désiré (6 Dimokritou), a neighborhood institution since 1962.

Stopping in for a gâteau Saint Honoré or profiterole, or perhaps a slice of quiche for a savory option, makes for a pleasant break before our next stop.

© SOFIA PAPASTRATI, PERIKLES MERAKOS

Frescoes in the Church of Aghios Dionysios Areopagite in Kolonaki.

A slice of St. Honoré at the pâtisserie Désiré.

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On Foot

The Angelos and Leto Katakouzenos Foundation.

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The Inner Circle

In the early to mid-20th century, the intellectual and cultural life of Athens was flourishing, as those who became known as the “Generation of the '30s” – painters, architects, writers, and artists – created contemporary expressions of ‘Grécité’ (“Greekness”) and added to the Greek contribution to the modern cultural landscape. Henry Miller captured the moment in “The Colossus of Maroussi,” recounting his encounters with the poet Seferis, the writer and intellectual Katsimbalis (the “Colossus” of the title), and the painter Ghika, among many others. The home and studio of Nikos Hadjikyriakos Ghika is now the Ghika Gallery of the Benaki Museum (Fri, Sat 10:00-18:00, 3 Kriezotou, benaki.org). Artworks, photographs, correspondence, and artifacts on display on the lower floors document Greece’s enormous cultural output between the mass arrival of refugees from Asia Minor in 1922 and the beginning of the military dictatorship in 1967. Ghika’s home and studio are on the upper floors; the living area, so modern in its elegant use of concrete, was the site of many an engaging conversation that shaped the cultural landscape of Greece.

These were also the social circles of the pioneering psychiatrist Angelos Katakouzenos and his wife, the writer (and member of the Greek resistance in WWII) Leto Katakouzenos. Their art-filled apartment – whose collection includes a portrait of Mrs. Katakouzenos by Chagall – was a meeting place for the most dynamic minds of the era, including Camus and Faulkner, as well as Nobel laureate poets Seferis and Elytis. The apartment is now a house museum; the Angelos and Leto Katakouzenos Foundation (4 Amalias) welcomes visitors by prearrangement on Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 6 p.m. (info@katakouzenos.gr).

Nearby Oinoscent (45 Voulis) serves a fine selection of Greek and international wines by the glass. They also offer artisanal cheeses, charcuterie, and a seasonal, locally focused bistro-style menu.

Tapestry at the Ghika Gallery.

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© PERIKLES MERAKOS, BENAKI MUSEUM, GHIKA GALLERY

Sommelier Aris Sklavenitis and chef John Tsikoudakis of the wine bar Oinoscent.

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OX CHOP HOUSE is the new meeting point for meat lovers in Athens. At Ox, the stars are the spit roaster, the wood-fired oven, the charcoal and the frying pan, as they are in the Greek tradition. The menu is comprehensible and from start to finish emanates a meaningful creativity, just as envisioned by the award-winning chef Michalis Nourloglou, who not only signs the menu but is also at the forefront of the open kitchen.

THE WINE LIST has been curated by wine expert Giannis Makris and includes approximately 100+ meat-friendly fine labels, mainly from Greek winemakers, along with choices from international producers. Of course, there is also a wide variety of beers and carefully selected spirits.

DESIGNED with simplicity and minimalism in mind and fully accessible and friendly to people with disabilities, OX is dominated by the earthy tones and comfortable seating.

The focal point is the open kitchen with the Spanish custom-made parilla, while the glass walk-in cellar steals the show with its vaulted ceiling reminiscent of an old cellar.

OX CHOP HOUSE 9 Chatzigianni Mexi Street, Athens (behind the Hilton) Τηλ.: 2107107070

Instagram: ox_athens

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THE 900-METER WALK from the Benaki Museum of Greek Culture to the Basil & Elise Goulandris Foundation connects a number of significant cultural institutions and covers Athens’ most prestigious street. Our walk begins at the Benaki, housed in a mansion enlarged for the Benaki family by architect Anastasios Metaxas; the museum provides an excellent overview of Greek culture with exhibits spanning prehistory through the 20th century. Directly across Vasilissis Sofias Avenue (and bordering the National Gardens) begins Irodou Attikou Street, home to the Maximus Mansion – the offices of the Prime Minister – and the Presidential Mansion, initially designed as a palace for Crown Prince Constantine by the architect Ernst Ziller.

Irodou Attikou is home to another Greek institution – the Evzones, Greece’s elite Presidential Guard, whose traditional costume features the kilt-like “fustanella” of 400 pleats (symbolizing the years of Ottoman occupation). The most famous place to witness the Presidential Guard is among the crowds in front of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, opposite Syntagma Square. But here, on quiet and shaded Irodou Attikou, you can witness the stylized choreography of their slow and perfectly synchronized march up close, accompanied by the sound of their “tsarouchi,” or shoes, striking the pavement.

Members of the Presidential Guard crossing the street near the Maximos Mansion.

KALLIMARMARO

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The Kallimarmaro stadium was built using Pentelic marble.

A good burger is only as good as its main ingredients Burger restaurant since 2011

Nymfon Square 1, Glyfada 166 74 tel. 210 8940 260 Instagram: theburgerjoint Facebook: The Burger Joint Website: http://www.theburgerjoint.gr

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At the end of the street, you’ll marvel at the Kallimarmaro – the Panathenaic Stadium – dazzling white under the Attic sun or romantically aglow in the evening.

Ernst Ziller had originally undertaken excavating a 2nd century AD stadium built on this site, the place of the Panathenaic festival in the 4th century BC. But who better than an Olympic athlete to rebuild a stadium here? Anastasios Metaxas, an architect and Olympic marksman (he competed four times, winning a silver medal in 1906), designed the Kallimarmaro (“Beautiful Marble”) in preparation for the first modern Olympic Games, held here in 1896.

Less than 400 meters from here is the Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation. Focusing primarily on European Art of the late 19th century through the contemporary era, its world-class collection features significant pieces by artists such as van Gogh, Monet, Theotokopoulos (El Greco), Miró, Kiefer, and many others. Superb pieces by Tsarouchis, Moralis, Takis, Vassiliou, Tetsis, Kounelis, and others provide a fine introduction to Modern Greek art as well. The museum’s more intimate scale enhances the connection with the works, individually lit to stand out against the dark walls, that the visitor feels.

Pangrati is a popular neighborhood for a sociable afternoon or evening out; only a few steps from the museum, Louvron (6 Eratosthenous) was once a traditional “kafeneio.” It retains all its original features, such as the marble tables, wooden chairs, and cozy courtyard, but now boasts a modern menu. Try the aged tsipouro, a traditional Greek spirit.•

The SNFCC, a spectacular center for culture and learning designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop, has had an enormous impact on the cultural landscape of Athens. This complex, in the seaside district of Faliro, was designed by Renzo Piano to emphasize the relationship of the city with the sea; the “lighthouse” at the top offers panoramic views from the Saronic Gulf and Piraeus to the Parthenon, while the 400-meter-long canal is fed with water from the sea. Surrounded by one of Athens’ most extensive green spaces, the award-winning building, a model of sustainability, houses the National Library and the Greek National Opera. The GNO (nationalopera.gr) hosts opera and ballet performances, as well as concerts. The SNFCC is definitely worth a visit; keep in mind, however, that transportation is needed to get there from downtown.

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© NIKOS KARANIKOLAS

A destination in its own right - The Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center

photo credit: Gavriil Papadiotis

NEA ODOS A “green” electric-focused company In 2018, Nea Odos became the first company to create and provide the infrastructure necessary for electric vehicles to make long-distance journeys in Greece.

ACTIVELY ENGAGED in promoting electro mobility, innovation and new technologies, the Ionia Odos is the only motorway in Greece that offers electric vehicles the possibility to recharge along its entire length at all its Motorists Service Stations (at Evinochori, Amvrakia, Amfilochia, Filippiada and Episkopiko).

The concessionaire Nea Odos S.A. provides this service to electric vehicle owners, offering charging stations nearly every 30km on the entire 196 kilometers of the motorway. Each charging point can charge up to three vehicles at a time.

The same service is available on the section of the Athens-Thessaloniki-Evzonoi motorway that Nea Odos operates, maintains and manages. For three years now, fast charging points have been available at all Motorists Service Stations (at Varympompi, Kapandriti,

Malakassa, Schimatari, and Atalanti), and two charging points have also been installed at the Sofades Motorist Service Station on the E65-Central Greece Motorway.

In addition to all of these, the company has installed eight V3 Tesla Superchargers at the Atalanti Motorist Service Station (four per traffic lane). According to Tesla, these charging points can provide charging power of up to 250 kW each for the company’s models, making them some of the country’s most powerful electric vehicle fast chargers. To put this in context, a Tesla Model 3, operating at maximum efficiency, only needs a five-minute charge to complete a 120km route.

In total, Nea Odos is providing 48 fast charging points that can accommodate up to 72 electric vehicles at a time.

MALAKASA MOTORISTS SERVICE STATION (SEIRIOS)

At Nea Odos, we're investing in electro mobility for the long term. Honoring our motto of "Go Green" and putting our strategic goals of continuous energy savings and environmental protection through innovation into action, we've commissioned the first fleet of 100% hybrid and electric vans. We're the country’s first motorway operation, maintenance and management company to begin implementing a comprehensive plan to replace its fleet with 100% hybrid and electric vehicles (in 2022, our electric vehicle fleet comprised 32 hybrid vehicles and 12 fully electric vehicles), and we're supporting this by equipping our facilities with 18 electric vehicle charging points.

ea Odos operates, maintains and manN ages the following: • The Ionia Odos motorway, which extends over a length of 196km from Antirrio to Ioannina • A section of the Athens-Thessaloniki (A.Th.E) motorway, covering 172.5km from the Metamorfosis interchange in Attica to Skarfia in Fthiotida • The 11km connecting branch Schimatari-Chalkida of A.Th.E. Motorway

ADVERTORIAL

A FLEET OF GREEN VEHICLES

I n another key investment, Nea Odos has designed, implemented and set into pilot operation Greece’s first hybrid electric vehicle charging station powered by photovoltaic panels. These panels, located atop the parking shelters, produce green energy to charge electric vehicles. This project involved: • The construction of parking shelters.

• The installation of photovoltaic (PV) panels on these shelters, with a total capacity of approximately 500 kWp. • The placement of two high-power DC charging points in each section, for a total of four charging points, each with a power output of 120 kW. • The use of hybrid inverters. Electricity generated from the PV panels goes to the charging points when cars charge up during the day.

Any excess energy not consumed by vehicle charging is used to satisfy the energy needs of the service station itself.

Since it was established, Nea Odos has continuously sought new ways to serve as the best possible travel companion to motorists and to provide the highest levels of road safety and service through innovative practices and technologies. At the same time, environmental protection and conservation remain indisputable priorities for the company, as shown by the adoption of these concerns as critical pillars in the company’s sustainable development program.n

A cardamom bun from Kora Bakery.

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HOT STUFF

At the door of the restaurant Linou Soumpasis Kai Sia.

Some of the most interesting casual eateries in the city, where you can discover wonderful flavors and exciting spaces in which to refuel.

B Y N I KO L E TA M A K R YO N I TO U , N E N A D I M I T R I O U , G E O R G I A PA PA S TA M O U , MARINA PETRIDOU AND CHRISTINA TZIALLA FROM GASTRONOMOS MAGAZINE AT H E N S

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KORA

This is undoubtedly where you’ll find the city’s finest croissant, a claim we can confidently make after thorough testing. Kora stands out among the exciting new-wave bakeries that have rekindled a focus on genuine sourdough and high-quality ingredients. Their commitment to excellence is evident not just in their croissants and their bread but also in their sweet pastries, as all their doughs undergo a meticulous 72-hour maturation process, enriching them with exceptional textures and rich depths of flavor.

For connoisseurs of fine pastries, their exquisite croissants and the sublime pain au chocolat are must-tries. Crafted with traditional croissant dough, generously laced with rich French butter, and filled with luxurious chocolate, these treats are a culinary delight. The secret to their extraordinary taste lies in the harmonious blend of dark and milk chocolate, creating a perfectly balanced and indulgent taste experience.

Their apple Danish, adorned with creamy pastry cream and an oat crumble topping, are not to be missed, and neither are their aromatic cardamom buns – if you're lucky enough to find either of them on the shelves. ➢44 Anagnostopoulou, Kolonaki, Τel. (+30) 210.362.7855, Mon-Fri 08:00-18:00, Sat-Sun 08:30-15:00.

Almond croissants are one of the specialties at Kora Bakery.

All smiles at the bakery Tromero Paidi.

TROMERO PAIDI

As we make our way through the array of treats from this French-inspired artisan bakery and patisserie, we often ask in amazement: Does Tromero Paidi (“Enfant Terrible”) excel at everything?

This place truly merits accolades for its unwavering dedication to quality. The skilled bakers of this establishment in Ilisia use the finest ingredients; they choose premium Breton butter, eggs from free-ranging hens and, most importantly, a natural sourdough starter rather than yeast. Their Parisian baguettes might have put them on the map, but it’s their airy, butter-rich brioche loaf and their richly flavored multi-grain bread, made with a blend of five different flours, that are this bakery’s gems. The savory fillo pies they craft with meticulous care are exceptional, too. One bite of their flaky spinach or cheese pie, bursting with buttery goodness, is enough to win over even the most discerning palates. And let’s not overlook their desserts, crafted with quiet precision and yet deserving of loud praise. The lemon pie strikes a perfect balance between sweet and tart, the flan is delightfully creamy, and the eclairs are a dream. ➢30 Papadiamantopoulou, Ilisia, Tel. (+30) 210.777.7537, Mon-Fri 07:00-19:00, Sat 08:00-17:00.

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Foodie Guide

© ALEXANDROS ANTONIADIS, DIMITRIS VLAIKOS

A kourou, or cheese pie, from the bakery Takis.

TAKIS

Long before the arrival in Athens of “third wave” bakeries, with their trendy sourdough and Instagramworthy loaves, there was Takis. Tucked away in the heart of bustling Koukaki, this establishment is a testament to traditional bread-making. A visit to Takis, conveniently close to the city center is always an easy option. Here you’ll find baguettes, dense sourdough bread, and rustic French pain de campagne, ideal companions for local cheeses, cold cuts, and good Greek wine. You might want to try their kourou (cheese pies), stars in their own right. Humble in appearance, like a lovingly but awkwardly folded napkin, they hold a certain homemade charm. Unlike mass-produced kourou pies, Takis’ version avoids any heavy aftertaste, thanks to its butter-kneaded dough that dissolves like a biscuit. The filling is a flavorful revelation, dominated by spicy feta and complemented by anthotyro cheese, making these savory pies tasty treats indeed. ➢14 Misaraliotou, Koukaki, Τel. (+30) 210.923.0052, Mon-Fri 07:00-20:30, Sat 07:00-16:00

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REDD

In a neighborhood with countless cafés where people can sit and engage in the art of conversation, this small boutique espresso bar on Kapsali Street is something special. They serve the perfect espresso in lovely ceramic cups for those standing at the bar or in takeaway containers; the latter are particularly popular with the area’s residents, who fuel up on the way to work, after their morning exercise, during their dog walks, or while running errands. Redd is possibly the first Greek coffee company to emphasize the importance of flavor over the origin of the beans. The coffee has always been up to the highest standards on our numerous visits. Those who end up at this tiny shop know precisely why they’ve passed by all the others. ➢8 Kapsali, Kolonaki, Τel. (+30) 216.900.2141, Mon-Fri 07:3020:00, Sat 08:00-19:00, Sun 08:30-18:00.

WILLIWAW CAFÉ & CANTEEN

An excellent spot for a morning pick-me-up, this colorful coffee shop, boasting Scandinavian decor, eclectic background music, and a welcoming ambiance, opened in 2021 on Kerkyras Street.

It became a neighborhood favorite during a period when Kypseli was undergoing a sort of renaissance. Area residents enjoy their morning coffee here, along with a variety of freshly-made treats.

It’s also a chosen location for both casual and business meetings, often held at the few outdoor tables. Two weeks out of every month, they feature coffee from the Kross roastery of Ηania, Crete. The rest of the time, they showcase a rotation of selected coffee beans from other renowned roasteries, both local and international, including the exceptional Berlin-based The Barn.

Their menu includes a variety of tarts, sweet cookies, seasonal cakes, sandwiches, and focaccia creations. In the near future, they plan to expand and prepare an even wider variety of foods.

Animal companions are welcome, too. ➢69 Kerkyras, Kypseli, Tel. (+30) 210.822.0745, Mon-Fri 07:00- 20:00, Sat 08:00-20:00, Sun 09:00-18:00

MÖTE

Serving hand brew coffee at Möte.

In the past, most cafés in Piraeus were known for their waterfront views rather than their exceptional beverages.

That changed when Möte came along, with its excellent products and its prime location. The owners work with the brand Create by Stefanos Domatiotis, a barista of international fame, to provide their customers with everything coffee-related, from seminars to roasted beans. Let them fill one of their attractive cups with a smooth, velvety cappuccino that you can enjoy while watching passersby on Sotiros Dios promenade. They have a wide variety of coffees of different origins and processing methods. The staff is extremely knowledgeable, so ask for their recommendations, and they’ll reward you with the best coffee of your day. ➢Sotiros Dios & Praxitelous, Piraeus, Tel. (+30) 213.046.7970, Mon-Sat 07:30-21:30.

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FOOD

A selection of sugar -free nut butters MINU at Wild Souls.

Ideal for a scrumptious breakfast or brunch either before or after your visit to the

Acropolis, Minu is located in Thiseio, one of the most historic neighborhoods of Athens, in a wonderfully preserved single-family home with an elegant facade.

The interior decor is intriguing as the indoor space blends with the outdoors, the ground floor opens up onto the terrace, and the plants seem to form part of the art objects. On our visits, we enjoy dipping our grilled rustic village bread, drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with sea-salt flakes and oregano, into the rich yolks of our poached eggs. The almond milk flavored with ginger, honey, and cinnamon is yummy, as are the hearty bowls filled with bulgur, granola, and fruits. The scrambled eggs with roasted cherry tomatoes and feta are everyone’s favorite, as indeed are the extraordinary wraps, particularly the one with chicken curry, which won us over completely. ➢50 Sarri, Thiseio, Τel. (+30) 210.323.2022, daily from 09:00-00:00.

STANI

Milky miracles at Stani, one of the oldest pastry shops in town.

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WILD SOULS

This place radiates big-city energy with its beautiful space, its mixed crowd of locals and international visitors, and its wholesome philosophy around vegan and healthy eating; it would fit in perfectly in Berlin or London, hotbeds of new dining trends. We usually come here in the morning, when it’s quieter, and always choose something different from its exciting menu. We’re obsessed with the well-balanced, well-baked, and crispy granola bowl with fresh forest fruit that comes with your choice of nut milk. Also delicious is the vegan BLT, made from whole grain focaccia stuffed with soy tempeh (a solid blend of fermented soybeans) marinated in a handmade BBQ sauce, topped with avocado and cashew butter mayo.

The “egg no egg” category, typical of their inventiveness, will surely get your attention. Wild Souls also functions as a grocery store; before leaving, we usually pick up some of their homemade nut butters or one of their unusual halvahs, made without sugar or palm oil, such as the honey hazelnut halvah. ➢36 Voulis, Syntagma, Τel. (+30) 210.323.1438.

Mon-Sat 08:00-21:00, Sun 10:00-20:00.

Stani isn’t for the lactose intolerant; it’s an Athenian culinary institution that’s been delighting patrons with exquisitely fresh milk and dairy-based delicacies for over 90 years. Its founder, Nikolaos Karagiorgos, came from the famous dairy village of Athanasios Diakos in Fokida, central Greece, and his descendants, who still run the establishment, honor a legacy of outstanding quality and heartfelt personal service. There are enticing options here; picture a small plate with a fresh chunk of thick butter, lavishly soaked in thyme honey, alongside a soft, warm, round loaf of bread, or perhaps a creamy rice pudding, liberally sprinkled with cinnamon. They have rich sheep’s yogurt with honey and crunchy walnuts, as well as loukoumades (Greek doughnuts) soaked in honey, buttery kourou (cheese pies), or hearty pies with wild greens wrapped in rustic fillo pastry. In the ever-evolving city of Athens, Stani remains a constant. ➢10 Μarika Κotopouli, Omonia, Τel. (+30) 210.523.3637, Mon-Sat 07:00-22:30, Sun 07:30-22:30.

DANGEROUS MINDS is a Greek streetwear concept store in the center of Athens.

The store is located on Mitropoleos square, hidden inside a green corner far from the noisy market. Inside an old fabric workshop which is joined with an old apartment, the shop looks more like a home than an ordinary store. Here, you will find only carefully selected brands.

The Dangerous Minds approaches streetwear culture with a Balkan-Mediterranean perspective aiming at the authentic promotion of an Athenian concept. Brands like Pressure, Hard, Garments give the Greek character to the concept, while Stussy's selections Carhartt WIP, Aries, Gramicci complete the concept.

Dangerous Minds 11 Mitropoleos Square, Athens, 10556 T. 210-3315362 | info@dangerousminds.gr www.dangerousminds.gr IG @dangerousminds.gr

TASTY

DODONI

In a city awash in morning pastries, the kourou (cheese pie) from Dodoni distinguishes itself with grace and quality. Avoiding the pitfalls of artificial cheeses, frozen doughs, or harsh oils, Dodoni’s kourou is a genuine delight. It’s a small, golden, butter-scented treat, offering just enough delicious substance and sustenance to power the start to your day. Since the early ’70s, these pies have been made fresh daily in Dodoni’s workshop, their inviting aroma something to wake up to in the Omonia area. While their kourou is a standout, their handmade bougatsa (creamy custard wrapped in golden brown crispy fillo) and their traditional small pizza with its sweet tomato sauce are also deservedly popular. ➢9 Lykourgou, Omonia, Τel. (+30) 210.324.2761, Mon-Sat 06:00-16:00.

Savory pies aplenty at Dodoni.

The gyros at Achilleas.

DIY sandwiches at Guarantee.

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© ANGELOS GIOTOPOULOS, DIMITRIS VLAIKOS, NIKOS KARANIKOLAS, ASPA KOULYRA

GUARANTEE

For over three decades, Guarantee has been a staple in Koukaki, a constant in an ever-changing neighborhood.

Despite the influx of new eateries and the area’s transformation into a tourist hotspot, Guarantee has retained its simple charm and timeless appeal. This no-frills sandwich shop is a favorite among both locals and tourists, with customers patiently lining up for its renowned food items.

While there’s a tempting selection of ready-made sandwiches, the real delight is in crafting your own. Choose from an impressive range of 27 cheeses, cold cuts and grilled meats and pair them with one of the 11 types of bread available, many from the nearby Takis bakery. Run by Yiannis Karambelas, his wife Haroula, and their sons, Guarantee shines brightest in the mornings. It’s the perfect spot for a fresh juice and a satisfying breakfast sandwich, crafted by hands that know how to please the palate. ➢41 Veikou, Koukaki, Τel. (+30) 210.922.6924, Mon-Sat 09:00-17:00.

Foodie Guide ACHILLEAS

Step back in time at Achilleas, where the art of crafting perfect pork gyros is still celebrated just as much as it was in the past. This outstanding eatery stands as one of Athens’ final bastions of a tradition that began in the 1970s, stoked by influences ranging from Turkish doner to Lebanese shawarma. Amidst a sea of change in which many establishments have seen a decline in the quality of what they serve, Achilleas stands firm as a proud upholder of this classic Athenian delicacy. The owners, with a passion for authenticity, continue to engage in the nearly lost art of preparing the meat by hand. They meticulously debone it themselves and season it with the perfect balance of salt and pepper. They cook just enough each day to ensure that each serving is fresh and delicious. Their gyros are nothing short of exceptional – a delightful harmony of tempting flavors, with pork that’s a heady mix of textures, crispy on the edges yet tender in the middle. As the evening creeps on at the eatery, a sense of urgency begins to build; the vertical rotisseries are almost bare of meat! No one wants to miss out; they know that wrapped in those firm pitas will be a tasty treasure trove of rich, red tomatoes from Filiatra in Messinia, bursting with juiciness; homemade tzatziki for an added creamy, zesty kick; and tangy onion to complete the symphony.

Gyros from Achilleas are more than just a quick and tasty meal option; they’re a celebration of tradition, an homage to simplicity, and a testament to the timeless allure of Athenian street food. ➢18 Spintharou, Neos Kosmos, Τel. (+30) 210.902.1391, Mon-Fri 16:30-00:00.

Worth the wait at Kostas.

KOSTAS

Lean meat seasoned solely with salt and pepper, freshly baked soft pitas that aren’t greasy, irresistibly sweet tomatoes even in winter, and an abundance of fresh parsley: when someone has mastered the art of making souvlaki the way that Kostas has, approaching it with almost sacramental reverence, it becomes a dish you can relish at any hour, even in the morning. In fact, preferably in the morning, particularly if you’re looking to kick-start your day with an energy and taste boost. As every Athenian who frequents the city center knows, this establishment almost always sells out its souvlaki by early afternoon, leaving little room for delay: even at 10 a.m., there are invariably two or three customers already waiting outside.

Note: For his tylihto (wrapped) souvlaki, Kostas adds yogurt instead of tzatziki, along with onions and a generous sprinkle of red pepper for those who fancy it. ➢7 Filellinon, Syntagma, Tel. (+30)210.322.8502, Mon-Sat 10:00-16:00, but if you plan to go after 13:00, call ahead to place your order.

↳ GRAB SOMETHING AT H E N S

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Foodie Guide © ANGELOS GIOTOPOULOS

TASTY

BLACK SALAMI

Over the last couple of years, this Exarchia micro-bakery has become more and more popular, continually refining its baking techniques and crafting innovative options made with top-notch ingredients. A standout since its opening, it quickly captured our culinary curiosity, producing exceptional slowmatured loaves of bread, rich in flavor, which form the base for their inventive “portable” brunch selections featuring various egg preparations and some of the most skillfully assembled sandwiches in the city. Their commitment to quality is evident in their choice of imported Italian flours, free from additives, stabilizers, or enhancers. Many of their ingredients are sourced through direct partnerships with small-scale Greek producers, effectively cutting out the middleman. Make sure to arrive early to snag their sought-after bread, and stay to try their distinctive cheese and spinach pies – these are essentially bread stuffed with interesting cheese and vegetable combinations – as well as their hearty sandwiches, such as their BLT made with pancetta from Serres, their tender slow-cooked beef brisket sandwich, or their Black Pastrami, boasting 180 grams of pastrami complemented by homemade pickles. ➢71 Zoodochou Pigis & Methonis, Exarchia, Tel. (+30) 211.418.7956, Mon-Sat 09:00-17:00, Sun 10:00-17:00.

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↳ GRAB SOMETHING

ΣΕ ΜΙΑ ΠΡΑΓΜΑΤΙΚΗ ΟΑΣΗ ΤΗΣ ΑΘΗΝΑΣ, στα όρια της αρχαίας και της σύγχρονης πόλης και με την απόλυτη θέα προς τον ιερό βράχο της Ακρόπολης, βρίσκεται το “THETA”, το all day καφέ-εστιατόριο που δημιουργήσαμε με αγάπη για την ελληνική κουζίνα και με σεβασμό προς την παράδοση. Από την ανατολή του ηλίου, μπορείτε να απολαύσετε τον καφέ σας, συνοδευόμενο από πρωινό ή brunch, να συνεχίσετε με μεσημεριανό και το βράδυ να δοκιμάσετε μοναδικά πιάτα, με γεύσεις από όλη την Ελλάδα. Σας περιμένουμε!

IN A REAL OASIS OF ATHENS, on the borders of the ancient and modern city and with the absolute view to Acropolis, there is “THETA”, the all day café-restaurant that we created with love for Greek cuisine and respect for tradition. From sunrise, you can enjoy your coffee accompanied by breakfast or brunch, continue with lunch and in the evening, try unique dishes with flavors from all over Greece.

We look forward to welcoming you! Αδριανού 11, Αθήνα 105 55 Τηλ.: 210 331 8693 theta-athens.gr info@theta-athens.gr theta.athens theta.athens Adrianou 11, Athina 105 55 Tel.: 210 331 8693 theta-athens.gr info@theta-athens.gr theta.athens theta.athens

Foodie Guide

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LINOU SOUMPASIS KAI SIA

Despite perhaps trying a bit too hard with its decor and its tongue-in-cheek self-description as “simple restaurant - office - candles,” this modern taverna has captivated us with its distinct culinary flair. Now in its third year, it steadfastly honors the principles of seasonal and local produce, crafting slow-cooked, scrumptious dishes. Head chef Loukas Mailer’s passion for superior extra-virgin olive oil is a hallmark of his creations. Many of his dishes leave behind rich and flavorful traces of olive oil made from Koroneiki olives from Ancient Olympia, and you’ll want to soak them up with the delicious fresh bread. The menu, a canvas of culinary innovation, changes almost daily. Standout dishes that have left a lasting impression include succulent beef cheeks with chickpeas, perfectly grilled mackerel served with a subtly sweet and sour lentil salad, and bean soup with wild mushrooms. Other great choices include charcoal-grilled oysters, antikristo (a traditional Cretan technique of roasting meat over coals) goat from the island of Lemnos, cherry tomato and Greek brie salad, and freshly made lemon-infused pasta. The homemade candles that adorn the tables are also available for purchase at the restaurant. ➢2 Melanthiou, Monastiraki, Τel. (+30) 210.322.0300, Mon-Fri 18:00-01:00, Sat-Sun 14:00-01:00.

© ASPA KOULYRA

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Foodie Guide

TASTY

ELLA GREEK COOKING

© CHRISTINA GEORGIADOU

Nena Ismyrnoglou is a chef at the forefront of inventive new Greek cuisine, utilizing PDO ingredients with quiet consistency. At Ella Greek Cooking, her menu is full of standout dishes, each a delectable nod to home-style traditions and comforting warmth. Specialties include chickpea soup with rosemary, slowcooked over twelve hours in a clay pot; lusciously sweet giant beans atop a red lentil cream; and aromatic fava purée accompanied by black-eyed peas. Her homemade dolmadakia (stuffed grape leaves), infused with herbs and toasted almonds, are nothing short of culinary poetry; dip them in the fragrant yogurt with Chios mastic before you pop them in your mouth. Her vegetables are always in season, so you will rarely find the same ones on offer; she grills them lightly and serves them with hummus. Her fricassée dishes are prepared with lamb, goat, or kid meat, selected based on the finest market availability. The giouvetsi, which is made with kid goat, aromatic herbs, and creamy galomyzithra cheese, is sublime. And what can one say about chestnut stifado with plums? These are traditional Greek dishes, made just as they should be. ➢26 Mitropoleos, Tel. (+30) 210.331.5547, Sun-Thu 10:00-00:00, Fri-Sat 10:00-01:00.

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Foodie Guide

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LELOUDAS

© CHRISTINA GEORGIADOU, ANGELOS GIOTOPOULOS

How is it that we still love this charming pre-war taverna, nestled in a humble side street off Petrou Ralli? How has it weathered decades, including some truly challenging times and yet remains not just relevant, but essential to the city's diners? It’s a fascinating case study in a city where steadfast beacons are vital amidst constant change and evolution. Since 1928, from the moment the first pan sizzled and the first glasses were filled with their signature homemade wine, Leloudas has been run by the same family, consistently luring us in with its straightforward, hearty midday meals served in a space full of memories. Our usual order includes classic feta with olives, tender meatballs made from freshly ground meat, rich stewed kid goat, and crispy fried potatoes topped with ground meat and dry mizithra cheese. We enjoy the wine crafted by Dimitris Leloudas, a trained oenologist, and conclude our meal with sweet crunchy, bite-sized pasteli (a honey and sesame bar). ➢8-10 Salaminias, Votanikos, Tel.(+30) 210.346.4167, Open daily 12:00-18:00 from September until May. In June and July, Mon-Fri only, August closed.

↳ GOING GREEK 8 8 — GREECE IS

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intrakat.gr

Foodie Guide

TASTY

© ANGELOS GIOTOPOULOS

FANIS’ KARAMANLIDIKA

The entrepreneur Fanis Theodoropoulos has the wisdom of a seasoned grocer, having grown up in his father's small grocery store, Arapian, on Evripidou, Athens' “street of spices,” which he still maintains to this day. The nearby restaurant-deli Karamanlidika was his next venture; the first branch opened on Evripidou and later a second shop was launched on Ermou Street.

Both locations sell quality products and serve outstanding meze, including their exquisite hunkiar beğendi (veal with eggplant purée), manti (an Anatolian ravioli), juicy kebabs, and the fragrant breads that come out of their stone-built oven and are served with pastourma (air-cured beef), soutzouki (beef sausage infused with cumin)and eggs, or ground meat. Their kanafeh (a sweet pastry), particularly noteworthy for its mastic flavor, is a delight. ➢119 Ermou, Thisseion, Τel. (+30) 210.321.9119.

Mon-Sat 13:00-23:00. ➢1 Sokratous & 52 Evripidou, Tel. (+30) 210.325.4184.

Mon-Sat 08:00-23:00.

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↳ GOING GREEK

Stories the world needs to know.

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IN DEPTH There’s so much more to Athens than meets the casual visitor’s eye: in this issue, we sum up the latest developments on the campaign for the repatriation of the Parthenon sculptures; we pay tribute to the - literally - eternal opera diva, Maria Callas, on the occasion of the centenary of her birth; we invite Syrago Tsiara, director of the National Gallery to decipher the ongoing exhibition “Urbanography,” on the evolution of the city in the post-war decades; and we inaugurate a collaboration with The New Yorker magazine with “The Hidden Archaeologists of Athens,” a captivating feature story

by Nick Romeo.

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© NATIONAL GALLERY ALEXANDROS SOUTSOS MUSEUM, PHOTO: THALIA KIMBARI

Spyros Vassiliou, (1903 - 1985) The Microcosm on Webster St., 1975, acrylic and gold leaf on canvas.

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PARTHENON SCULPTURES UPDATE:

The decades-long campaign for the return of the Parthenon Sculptures from the British Museum to Athens has never been more active, as both sides edge closer to a “win-win” agreement.

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© THE TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM © DEAGOSTINI/GETTY IMAGES/IDEAL IMAGE

How Close Are We to a Deal?

Right: A marble statue from the Parthenon’s East Pediment, currently at the British Museum. It may represent Dionysos, but Heracles and Theseus have also been suggested.

Below: The metopes, triglyphs, and statuary still affixed to the West Pediment of the Parthenon, still affixed to the monument. These metopes depict Greek soldiers fighting Amazons.

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UPDATE

T THE CAMPAIGN FOR the return

of the 2,500-year-old Parthenon Sculptures, also known as the “Elgin Marbles” in the United Kingdom, is the world’s longest-running cultural restitution dispute. The controversy revolves around the removal of dozens of decorative marble sculptures from the Parthenon in the early 19th century by Scottish diplomat Thomas Bruce, the 7th Earl of Elgin and British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, when Greece was still under Ottoman rule. About half of the 160-meter-long frieze that originally adorned the 5th-century BC temple dedicated to the goddess Athena, along with 15 sculpted relief panels (metopes) and figures from the two pediments, were stripped from the monument and shipped to England.

They were later acquired by the British Museum in 1816, where they have remained ever since.

Advocates for their repatriation argue that the sculptures are integral to Greece’s cultural heritage and should be reunited with the remaining fragments in Athens, now on display at the stateof-the-art Acropolis Museum, within direct view of the Parthenon. Many contend that removing the sculptures in the first place was both unethical and illegal – no official license (“firman”) signed by the Ottoman grand vizier has ever been recovered – and are therefore stolen cultural property that rightfully belongs to Greece. Others emphasize the importance of returning them to 9 6 — GREECE IS

their historical and cultural context; the division of the sculptures between two museums is a fragmentation of the Parthenon monument, the crowning glory of Athens’ Golden Age. Talking to the BBC during his brief, albeit eventful, visit to the UK in November, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis put it succinctly: “It’s as if I told you that you cut the Mona Lisa in half, you would have half of it at the Louvre and half at the British Museum, do you think your viewers would appreciate the beauty of the painting? This is essentially what happened with the Parthenon Sculptures.”

The growing trend for restitution

For 40 years now, the Greek government, cultural institutions, and a growing multitude of international supporters have engaged in various efforts to persuade the trustees of the British Museum to repatriate the sculptures. From the outset of the campaign, launched in 1983 by the indomitable Melina Mercouri (1920-1994), advocates have employed diplomatic channels, legal arguments and highly effective public awareness initiatives to garner support for the cause. The good news is that their efforts appear to be working. The past year has seen

MANY CONTEND THAT REMOVING THE SCULPTURES IN THE FIRST PL ACE WAS BOTH UNE THICAL AND ILLEG AL AND THE Y ARE THEREFORE STOLEN CULTURAL PROPERT Y THAT RIGHTFULLY BELONGS TO GREECE .

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several significant developments in this decades-long dispute. According to the latest YouGov survey conducted in July 2023, 64 percent of Britons favor sending the sculptures back to Greece, up from 59 percent two years ago.

Proponents also point to the broader trend of repatriation in the museum world, emphasizing the importance of ethical considerations and respect for the rights of nations to their cultural heritage. But here’s where we come up against a serious problem. Those on the side of retaining the Parthenon Sculptures in London express concern that repatriation could set a dangerous precedent and impact other museums and collections worldwide. Western museums would essentially be emptied of their exhibits.

Frustrating matters even further, successive UK governments have refused to get involved in the specific case of the sculptures, always deferring it back to the trustees of the British Museum. Other European governments have been announcing new and updated restitution policies in recent years and giving cultural objects back to former colonial possessions, but the trustees of the British Museum appear stubbornly out of step.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way

One of the most significant sticking points is the British Museum Act of 1963, which prevents the museum from returning items in its collection. And while the current UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, has no plans to change the law to allow a permanent return of the sculptures to Greece, regional museums across the country, from Glasgow to Cambridge, have been returning hundreds of cultural artifacts from their own collections to indigenous peoples around the world, including, most recently, 174 sacred and ceremonial objects from the Manchester Museum to the Aboriginal Anindilyakwa community of the Gulf of Carpentaria, off the northern coast of Australia.

© THE TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM

Sculptures

A marble relief from the North Frieze of the Parthenon depicts young cavalrymen riding in a procession; it's currently at the British Museum.

Speaking to the Guardian newspaper in September this year, Lewis McNaught, who runs the not-forprofit Returning Heritage project, said: “Regional museums are so far ahead of national institutions … it really just remains for national collections to wake up to the trend which is, actually, now global.” In the same article, Dan Hicks, a professor of contemporary archaeology at Oxford University as well as curator at the city’s Pitt Rivers Museum, said the whole debate around repatriation has become part of the “fake culture wars” with some on the

political right seeing it as “wokery.”

“What that means, sadly, for our national institutions is that they are being forced into a position of inertia and making themselves increasingly irrelevant with every week that goes by and every restitution that we see from the regions and elsewhere around the world. Everyone else is getting on with it.” The good news is that fragments of the Parthenon Sculptures held in other European collections have been trickling back to Greece over the past two years. Among these have been the “Fagan fragment,” a piece depicting AT H E N S

the foot of the goddess Artemis from the East Frieze, returned from the Antonio Salinas Museum in Palermo, Sicily, in 2022, and three fragments kept by the Vatican Museums in early 2023. Like regional museums across the UK and other parts of Europe, the Vatican has also voiced its willingness to return indigenous artifacts held in its collections. “The seventh commandment comes to mind: If you steal something, you have to give it back,” Pope Francis told the Associated Press in April. It seems that where there’s a will, there’s a way.

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But is the British Museum really that behind the times? Towards the end of 2022, Greek newspaper Ta Nea revealed that the current chair of the museum, George Osborne, a former politician who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 2010 to 2016, had been holding secret “behindthe-scenes meetings” with the Greek prime minister regarding the fate of the sculptures. As soon as the news broke, the British Museum announced to the BBC that the talks were “ongoing and constructive.” In February 2023, Osborne used the phrase “win-win” when speaking about a possible “cooperative arrangement” with the Greeks, signaling a tectonic shift in resolving the long-running dispute. Suddenly, there was genuine optimism in the air.

At the same time, the newly formed Parthenon Project, led by Lord Vaizey, a Conservative peer, began advocating for a specially tailored “cultural partnership agreement” between the British Museum and the Acropolis Museum in Athens, calling for both institutions to put aside the thorny issue of ownership and engage in a collaborative endeavor that would allow for the sculptures to be loaned back to Greece in return for “blockbuster artifacts that have never been seen outside Greece before.” The proposed “artifact swap” would include such items as the 3,600-year-old golden death mask of Agamemnon and the early 5th-century BC marble statue Kritios Boy. Importantly, this agreement would be deliverable within the current legal framework of the British Museum Act, thus overcoming a major stumbling block.

The mutually beneficial partnership would also lay the groundwork for establishing a joint Greek-British Foundation that would “fund a longterm program of scholarships and wider educational and cultural activities to benefit young people in the UK and Greece,” according to the Parthenon 9 8 — GREECE IS

King Charles III at the opening ceremony of the World Climate Action Summit during COP28 on December 1, 2023, in Dubai, wearing a tie emblazoned with the blue and white Greek flag.

© CHRIS JACKSON/GETTY IMAGES/IDEAL IMAGE

Hybrid deal: A “win-win” solution?

Project website. Sources at the Parthenon Project recently told Kathimerini newspaper that it would also fund the new wing of the National Archaeological Museum in Athens.

Osborne believes an agreement for cultural exchanges between Greece and the British Museum would be a pragmatic compromise. Speaking at the annual dinner for the trustees of the museum in November, he called for an arrangement that would allow the sculptures to be seen in Athens and London but which “requires no one to relinquish their claims, asks for no changes to laws which are not ours to write, but which finds a practical, pragmatic and rational way forward.”

What Osborne is describing here is a “hybrid deal,” one that would respect the red lines laid down by both sides regarding the sticky issue of ownership.

Nevertheless, it is important to stress that the Greek government would never agree to a loan of the sculptures, as this WINTER 2023-2024

would concede British ownership. Under Greek law, all antiquities belong to the state, and past negotiations on this issue have quickly broken down, with the Greek culture minister, Lina Mendoni, describing Elgin’s removal of the sculptures in the early 19th century as “a blatant act of serial theft.”

For its part, the world governing body on the protection of cultural heritage, UNESCO, continues to push for a resolution. Τhe great success came on September 29, 2021, at the 22nd session of the Intergovernmental Committee of UNESCO for Promoting the Return of Cultural Property to its Countries of Origin. For the first time in 37 years of continuous propositions of the Committee towards the UK, a decision was made which, in addition to the legal and ethical aspects of the Greek request, also recognizes its transnational/intergovernmental character.

The Committee also referred to the appalling conditions where the sculptures

Sculptures

Above: Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis of Greece discussing the Parthenon sculptures with journalist Laura Kuenssberg on November 26, 2023.

© AFP/VISUALHELLAS.GR

Below: Professor Nikolaos Chr. Stampolidis, General Director of the Acropolis Museum and two conservators examine one of three fragments of the Parthenon sculptures returned to Greece from the Vatican Museums.

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are kept in the 370-year-old museum, following news reports of water leaks and mold in the Duveen Gallery.

The King’s Speech

Considering all the progress that has been made in the past year, including the uptick in popular support in the UK for the return of the sculptures to Greece, the abrupt cancellation by the British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of a planned meeting at the end of November with his Greek counterpart, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, has left people on both sides of the debate dazed and confused. “I am baffled, as are most people,” a leading member of the British Museum’s Board of Trustees told Kathimerini a day after the diplomatic snub.

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“I AM BAFFLED, AS ARE MOST PEOPLE,” A LE ADING MEMBER OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM’S BOARD OF TRUSTEES TOLD K ATHIMERINI A DAY AF TER THE DIPLOMATIC SNUB. WINTER 2023-2024

the last minute “unprecedented” and “disrespectful.” And while Downing Street accused Mitsotakis of using the trip “as a public platform to re-litigate long-settled matters,” the row, momentarily at least, threatened to rupture the otherwise outstanding diplomatic relations between the two countries. But how has it affected the ongoing discussions regarding the fate of sculptures?

As the dust settles, it appears that Sunak’s grandstanding over the Parthenon Sculptures has backfired spectacularly, giving much-needed publicity to the campaign at a time when so many other, more pressing geopolitical events are competing for attention. Osborne, too, speaking to The Guardian at the end of November, revealed that Sunak had opened the door to a “devastating line of attack” from the opposition Labor Party and

© PARIS TAVITIAN/ACROPOLIS MUSEUM

The “Fagan fragment” was permanently returned to the Acropolis Museum from the Antonio Salinas Museum in Palermo, Sicily in January of 2022.

© AFP/VISUALHELLAS.GR

Sculptures that he was more determined than ever to continue with “secret talks” with the Greek government over a deal.

In the same week, King Charles III, Britain’s staunchly Hellenophile head of state, quite literally nailed his colors to the flag at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai, donning a tie and breast handkerchief emblazoned with the blue and white Greek flag. This brazen show of support is not surprising. During his last visit to the country of his father’s birth in March 2021, for the bicentenary of the start of the Greek Revolution, the then Prince of Wales expressed a “profound connection” to all things Hellenic.

It is important to stress, however, that the trustees of the British Museum, as well as a growing majority of the UK public, are painfully aware of the fact that, of the eight million or so artifacts in the London-based museum, many were acquired through the aggressive expansion of its former empire. Nonetheless, this should not prove insurmountable, as long as there remains an appetite in Britain, and Europe more broadly, for an open debate about the enduring legacies of colonialism and imperialism and how we, as progressive, democratic societies, can make amends for historic wrongs.

Two centuries after the Parthenon Sculptures were transported to London, there is reason to be optimistic that a solution will be found in the not-toodistant future. People on both sides of the fence are working hard to find a way out of the deadlock. Speaking to the UK press at the end of 2022, the General Director of the Acropolis Museum, Nikolaos Chr. Stampolidis, struck the perfect diplomatic note, echoing the sentiments of the late, great Melina Mercouri, who started the restitution campaign 40 years ago: “If there were a solution, Britain could be the protagonists of an ethical empire because this transcends our countries. If the marbles were reunited here in Athens, within view of the greatest symbol of democracy, it would be a great act for humanity.”•

S TEPHEN FRY, Member of the Parthenon Project’s Advisory Board, said: “It’s heartening to see the Parthenon Sculptures thrust into the public spotlight, albeit because of the Prime Minister’s recent dubious diplomatic decision. It’s clear that policymakers, the British public, and the media are increasingly supportive of calls to return these magnificent artifacts to Athens where they can be reunified as an artistic work and displayed most appropriately in the context of the Acropolis.

“To make that vision a reality, we must move the debate away from the quagmire of the past and towards an imaginative future. That means agreeing to disagree on the notion of ownership and delivering a deal that is both mutually enriching for both Greece and the UK and possible under the current law. We have proposed a landmark cultural partnership that would see the Sculptures reunified in Athens while other blockbuster artifacts come to the British Museum for rotating exhibitions, enhancing the museum’s cultural contribution.

“Our approach would also see a non-profit foundation established that would bring opportunities to young people and local communities and serve as a vehicle to drive much-needed fundraising for the refurbishment of the British Museum and the development of a new Hellenic Gallery with state-of-the-art technology that can be used to attract new visitors. This could be mirrored in Greece, with funding directed there towards the wonderful National Archaeological Museum. A forward-looking deal such as this goes beyond merely proposing an exchange of artifacts ... [to become] a cultural collaboration that would inspire the next generation of classicists.” (Originally published in Kathimerini)

Two of three Parthenon fragments returned from the Vatican Museums in March 2023. Pope Francis hailed the return a “gesture of friendship.”

Left: The head of a young man, from the North Frieze of the Parthenon. Above: A fragment of a horse’s head, one of the four horses of the goddess Athena, from a pediment of the Parthenon.

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© THE TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM

The notion of “Britishness” & the Parthenon Sculptures

HOW THESE ANCIENT GREEK ARTIFACTS BECAME AN ELEMENT OF ENGLISH NATIONALISM B Y I O A N N I S PA PA D O P O U LO S 1 0 2 — GREECE IS

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An 1819 painting by Archibald Archer showing the Temporary Elgin Room and staff members, a trustee and visitors at the British Museum.

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Sculptures

BACKGROUND

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© ALAMY/VISUALHELLAS.GR

Above: Thomas Bruce, the 7th Earl of Elgin, by Anton Graff, circa 1788.

Left: A watercolor from the book “In Search of Greece: Catalogue of An Exhibit of Drawings at the British Museum

by Edward Dodwell and Simone Pomardi from the Collection of the Packard Humanities Institutes,” 2013.

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Sculptures

BACKGROUND

I IT WAS NOT YOUR TYPICAL

breakfast meeting. Sir Anthony Carlisle, a surgeon and prominent member of London's elite, had planned a surprise for his all-male, art-loving toffish guests in June 1808, taking them to a room where boxing champion Bob Gregson stood positioned like an exhibit. Ten days later, the same group was invited to a shed used

by Lord Elgin where they could admire the pugilist’s form again, this time next to the Parthenon sculptures.

A few weeks later, that same shed was used to host a boxing match between top British pugilists set against the marble sculptures, an event that was described as the “perfect match between nature and art.”

These vignettes appear in the diary of Joseph Farington, a regular visitor to the makeshift exhibition space created

by Lord Elgin, which he described as being too cold in the winter and too hot in the summer.

Symbolic value

Fiona Greenland, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Virginia, has studied Farington’s diary, along with British Museum records and more than 1,000 newspaper publications from the early 19th century, to explore how London’s elite, but also people outside this circle, gradually came to regard the Parthenon Marbles as symbols of “Britishness.”

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“Ι was really puzzled by the question of how something made in Greece by Greek people was integrated into British national identity. How did that happen?

Usually, we are taught that nationalism focuses and takes pride in homegrown creations; it attempts to exclude foreign people and their creations,” Greenland says.

She believes that the placement of naked or half-naked athletes – boxing was incredibly popular among the upper classes at the time – among ancient Greek sculptures was not unwitting or merely a way of advertising the marbles.

“To me, it’s obvious that there was a very intimate physical comparison between the British athletes and the statues of Greek men. I think Elgin and his associates were very conscious of trying to integrate the sculptures into the British mentality,” Greenland notes.

As she writes in a paper on the subject, Elgin appears to have been making a concerted effort to convince his audience that Britain was the natural setting for the looted sculptures. “If the naked pugilists looked just like the mounted Greek warriors in the frieze, then Britons could mount a claim to embody the legacy of ancient Athens,” she argues.

We are still determining how many people in the UK continue to believe that the Parthenon Marbles are a part of the British national identity and heritage, and how decisive this could be in shaping their stance and position in the ongoing

“ WITHIN BRITAIN, THOSE WHO MIGHT WISH TO SUPPORT RESTITUTION ARE FACED WITH ACCUSATIONS OF POLITICAL WE AKNESS AND DISLOYALT Y.” WINTER 2023-2024

controversy. Last March, however, the influential, London-based conservative think tank Policy Exchange published a 63-page analysis on the issue of the Parthenon Sculptures, written by Sir Noel Malcolm. The journalist, historian and academic argues against the marbles’ return to Greece, saying that “the claim that Greek identity is essentially harmed by their absence from Greece is greatly exaggerated.” He also claims that “over more than 200 years, they have become part of Britain’s cultural heritage.”

Greenland notes a shift in public opinion in recent years, with polls showing that most Britons favor returning the sculptures to Greece. She also, however, points to the reactions of Britons who are opposed.

“If you look at the rhetoric against restitution in the UK, you will see people using the phrase ‘losing its marbles’ or ‘losing the marbles.’ So, for some people, restitution is a weakness; a political weakness. It signals capitulation, perhaps a lack of loyalty to the British nation or the British Museum. In Britain, those who might wish to support restitution are faced with accusations of political weakness and disloyalty, which might be very difficult to overcome, particularly for people seeking elective office,” she says.

Appropriation

Richard Hingley, professor emeritus of Roman archaeology at the University of Durham, notes that approaches to antiquity that can be traced several centuries back often constitute an effort to appropriate the past of others. He says that something similar happened in Britain with Rome.

“Classical Greece and classical Rome were so admired in Britain that people tried to find a connection. In the late 19th to the early 20th century, people were using that classical past very directly to justify what the British were doing in their empire,” he says. However, he adds, “I think a lot of people in Britain think that the British Empire is over, and we live in a different world.”

© AFP/VISUALHELLAS.GR

“White marble, white race”

In her 2012 paper “The Parthenon Marbles as Icons of Nationalism in 19th-century Britain,” Greenland notes that Elgin and his network of acquaintances among the higher echelons of British society launched an informal public relations campaign to promote the Parthenon Sculptures before these ended up at the British Museum. They wrote letters to newspapers lauding their aesthetic qualities, while politicians warned of the risk of these classical art masterpieces ending up in foreign collectors’ hands.

As she notes, a supranational narrative was formed over time, which

An original steel engraving drawn by Llewellyn Jewitt and rendered by William Radclyffe, 1841, depicting the Elgin Marbles Room in the British Museum.

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suggested that the marbles belong to everyone, while at the same time arguing that ancient Athens was a lost utopia that had no connection with modern Greece.

According to this line of thinking, endowing these antiquities with a universal character was a way of justifying their continued removal from Greece. Another element that may have contributed to this approach, Greenfield argues, may have been the color of the marbles. Even though they were not white in ancient times, the white patina they acquired over time, the monochromy, “makes it easier to project our own selves onto it.”

“White marble can be read as white people – British white, as Elgin and his circle saw it,” she argues.• GREECE IS — 1 0 7

Aghinor Asteriadis (1898-1977), Maroussi, 1973.

Egg tempera on wood panel, National Gallery Collection.

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What do popular cinema and art have in common with the post-war transformation of Athens and the urban experience?

Syrago Tsiara, director of the National Gallery and curator of the ongoing

THE CITY

exhibition “Urbanography,”

BY SYRAGO TSIARA

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has the answer.

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Curator᾿s view

EXHIBITION

Panayiotis Tetsis (1925-2016), Construction Site, 1964. Copper engraving and aquatint on paper, National Gallery Collection.

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THE EXHIBITION “URBANOGRAPHY” has assembled representations of

the city in Greek art from the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s with the intention of highlighting different iterations of the urban experience. The exhibition includes more than 200 pieces of art, including paintings, sculptures, engravings, installations and photographs, together with clips from 21 Greek films, some popular cinema hits and some works of cinéma vérité, in an aim to foster a dialogue between the arts.

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One catalyst for this dialogue is provided by the large-scale cinematic posters painted by Giorgos Vakirtzis to advertise the films on at the cinemas.

From the 1950s, these works infused a bit of cinema magic into city life through painting. At the time, they were regarded as images of mass culture rather than as works of art. However, the oversized portraits of the protagonists, with their realistic narrative quality, vivid colors, and dramatic intensity, essentially proposed a new type of urban representation. These works embodied elements of pure, functional pop art, using art to communicate and promote a message. They enhanced the allure to the public of the dark cinema hall, supporting an imaginative identification with their celluloid heroes and, by doing so, contributed to the further dissemination of the urban lifestyle, of which spectacles are a crucial aspect.

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The experiential function of art is one of the key issues raised by “Urbanography,” relevant both to the creators themselves and to how the exhibitions connect with the public.

Artists interpret the city not merely as a structured environment that encompasses them but also as a daily experience, a context they confront in terms of recognition, safety and acceptance, or in terms of exploration, negotiation and conflict. This is why the exhibition approaches the city as an experience, examining urbanization, reconstruction and migration within the framework of the rapid changes that occurred in post-war Greek society.

It tracks the radical transformation of the urban landscape caused by the property exchange system known as “antiparohi,” which led to the gradual disappearance of single-family homes, and looks at how scale, horizon, and

Giorgos Paralis (1908-1975), Barbara‘s Sink, 1971-1975.

Oil on canvas, National Gallery Collection.

frame are reshaped by the construction of apartment buildings and modern commercial establishments, the opening of roads, the creation of new city squares, and the increase in traffic of both people and vehicles. The residential and population shifts form new dynamics between the metropolitan center, the neighborhood, the suburb, the refugee areas, and locations where unauthorized construction is taking place. While the average standard of living improves significantly, new social divisions and exclusions emerge as well.

As the city grew

ARTISTS INTERPRE T THE CIT Y NOT MERELY AS A STRUCTURED ENVIRONMENT THAT ENCOMPASSES THEM BUT ALSO AS A DAILY E XPERIENCE .

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The construction site, a clear and potent symbol of the urban landscape᾿s evolution, occupies a central role in “Urbanography.” The “reconstruction” era, marked by a construction boom and city expansion, significantly broadens the thematic scope for artists with fresh fields of study. Drawing from their own unique backgrounds and interests, they craft a narrative of this building boom. This period of change also sees a transformation in daily life fueled by the spread of urban GREECE IS — 1 1 1

EXHIBITION

culture. The rise of a society centered on spectacle and consumption, along with the novel experiences that the city offers, becomes a crucial backdrop for shaping identities, particularly for both internal and external migrants. Elements such as football, cafés, shopfront displays, advertisements, fast cars and motorcycles, nightlife venues, tourism, seaside holidays, and household products that improve daily living, all offer possibilities and serve as rich source of inspirations for urban imagery in the works of artists like Yiannis Gaitis, Giorgos Paralis and Giorgos Ioannou.

In the realm of ethnographic painting, the dominant narrative portrays a specific identity that is being altered, encapsulating a resistance to changes perceived as threats to the disruption of a secure and familiar environment. This style of painting often depicts scenes from everyday life, capturing the essence of cultural and social dynamics in a period of transition. Against this backdrop of sometimes idyllic and idealized portrayal, the New Greek Realists of the early 1970s made a pivotal break.

Utilizing the tools of critical realism and the practice of collective action, they aimed to highlight and interpret the contradictions inherent in the modern way of life. This marked a significant shift in the Greek art scene, as artists began to critically engage with the complexities of everyday life and the evolving urban experience, moving beyond traditional representation to explore the deeper, often conflicting realities of society.

During the same period, ethnographic cinema, a paramount form of popular entertainment, experienced remarkable growth. This genre, accessible and affordable, spread widely among both urban and rural populations, particularly resonating with working-class audiences. Despite criticisms of their stereotypical simplicity and their uncritical focus on the passions of private lives, the Greek films of the 1950s and 1960s played a significant historical role as conduits of modernization. These 1 1 2 — GREECE IS

films were pivotal in introducing new perspectives on gender relations, family dynamics and societal roles, effectively becoming a sensitive canvas for documenting cultural and social transformations within the urban landscape. They navigated the delicate interplay between private and public life, contributing, as cultural catalysts, to these very changes.

The role of the movies

These movies deftly sketched out the evolving conditions of coexistence in urban centers, neighborhoods, and apartment blocks. They shaped consumer habits, attitudes, and both individual and collective behavior. Their enduring appeal is tied to the relatability of their settings and the articulation of societal shifts. The recall of now-lost or altered landmarks in these films adds to their allure rather than detracting from it. In the early months of the exhibition, even before the start of organized educational programs aimed at fostering intergenerational bonds through art, it was clear that certain cinematic scenes and artworks were inspiring older visitors to share personal stories with their children or grandchildren. These narratives, rich in references to the time, place and spirit of the artistic creations, bridged generations and deepened people’s engagement with the art.

The perspective of mainstream or commercial cinema in the urban setting

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is sharply contrasted by the incisive gaze of creators experimenting with critical realism in the 1960s. This viewpoint, while less popular in its time, later emerged as highly influential. Drawing inspiration from the dynamism of cinematic camera movements, the exhibition's narrative layout undertakes a continuous shift from grand to intimate scales, transitioning from panoramic views to close-up shots.

In “Urbanography,” the multifaceted city life is meticulously scrutinized.

Spaces like the city, the square, the street, the neighborhood, the alleyway, the construction site, the apartment complex, the balcony, the shop front, the individual apartment, and even the doorstep, all become focal points.

These varied urban elements highlight different facets of urban coexistence, each illuminated from a unique perspective.

The exhibition artfully navigates through the public and private realms of urban life, offering a nuanced exploration of the city’s complex tapestry.

This approach not only showcases the breadth of urban experiences but also investigates the subtleties and intricacies of city living. It᾽s an artistic endeavor that captures the essence of the urban landscape, reflecting its diverse and ever-changing nature through a kaleidoscope of artistic lenses and interpretations.

Thematic sections that include “Urban Scenery,” “Construction site,” “Nostalgia,” “Spectacle,” “Close-Up,” “Dreams and Conflicts,” and “Materialities” articulate the sequence of themes in the exhibition᾽s narrative. They function more as guideposts, key words that help “unlock” certain areas, rather than as strictly distinct and compact units.

The titles suggest an energy density in the sections that can potentially move from point to point, depending on the viewer’s perceptions and desires.

Admittedly, this choice of fluidity in the boundaries between exhibition sections is not a conventional curatorial approach. However, it consistently serves the function of visual representation, as

Curator᾿s view the perceptual patterns produced by the artworks are neither one-dimensional nor watertight. For instance, the theme of spectacle intersects with nostalgia, and vice versa. The close-up absorbs the conventions of scenography. Moreover, the interpretation of meaning and the emotional impact elicited by encountering an artwork is a relational, fluid condition: it largely depends on the terms of the visit, the tracing of a solitary or group journey, the curator᾽s choices of works that neighbor, converse with, or contrast each other, and on the individual viewer’s personality and/mood.

In the end, this blurred-edge approach reflects the multifaceted and interconnected nature of urban life itself, as well as its representation in art, offering an immersive and interactive experience that challenges and engages the audience on multiple levels.•

Artist Unknown, Zavoritis Pâtisserie in Syntagma Square (now demolished), Athens, early 1960s. Reproduction of a gelatin silver print, National Gallery Collection / Photographic Αrchives.

Below: Poster by Giorgios Vakirtzis for the 1963 movie “Il Gattopardo.”

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© PERIKLES MERAKOS

A larger-than-life portrait of Maria Callas greets commuters at the Megaro Moussikis metro station next to the Athens Concert Hall.

Inspired by the moving documentary presented by the Greek National Opera on the occasion of the centenary of Maria Callas’ birth, we learn more about the opera diva’s time in Athens.

MARY, MARIANNA, MARIA

BY XENIA GEORGIADOU AT H E N S

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© ATHENS CONS ERVATOIR E ARCH IVE / STAT HIS ARFA NIS COLL ECTIO N-AR CHIV E

Searching for Callas 1. Maria Kalogeropoulou, seated, with her mother, Evangelia, and her sister, Jackie, in 1940.

2. Maria at 17, with a friend in a park in Athens.

3. Bottom left, with her classmates on one of their trips to Kavouri.

4. Baritone Lakis Vassilakis and principal musician Leonidas Zoras congratulate Maria Callas with a kiss.

5. Callas at the recital she gave at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus in 1957.

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development. “In truth, it was in Athens where she completed her only formal music studies” says Vasilis Louras, Director of Communications at the Greek National Opera, who came up with the idea for the documentary “Mary, Marianna, Maria.”

The 104-minute-long film, which premiered on December 2nd, the centenary of Callas’ birth, poignantly explores the relatively unknown period in her life, before her departure for New York. The documentary focuses on her early career debuts, the defining individuals in her life, her early artistic triumphs, and the attacks she faced at the time, all against the backdrop of Greece's socio-political realities during World War II, the Civil War, and beyond.

The documentary also sheds light on the occasions when Callas returned to Greece, including her recital at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus in 1957 and her legendary performances in Epidaurus as Norma in 1960 and Medea in 1961.

The impetus for the film and the research behind it was the realization, during a press conference to announce the program for the upcoming season, that the international press was not aware of her full story. “I realized that even cultural editors specializing in Callas were unaware of her time in Athens. I thought it was our duty as an organization to fill this void through an audio-visual document that would allow them to understand the significance of these years,” says Louras, who co-directed the film with Michalis Asthenidis.

The National Theater, where Callas appeared in the drama The Merchant of Venice in October 1940.

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© THOMAS GERASOPOULOS

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THE OPERA DIVA᾽S BRIEF EIGHT-YEAR stay in Athens was vital to her

Searching for Callas First rejection, first applause

It was in 1937 when Maria first made her way to 35 Pireos Street, the building that housed the Athens Conservatoire. She was not accepted there, so her mother decided to enroll her in the Greek National Conservatoire on the corner of Solomou and 3 Septemvriou streets, for tuition under Maria Trivella, who agreed to teach her because she was impressed by her talent.

One year later, on April 11, 1938, Kalogeropoulou made her student debut, during a recital by Trivella’s class at the Parnassos Literary Society (8 Platia Karytsi), by performing excerpts from various operas, including Tosca. She was just 15 years old.

On September 16, 1939, Kalogeropoulou attempted once again to audition for the Athens Conservatoire but she was met with hostility. However, the renowned Spanish soprano Elvira de Hidalgo, who had been teaching at the conservatoire since 1934, tried to sway the committee and, in particular, the conservatoire’s director, Philoctetes Economides.

“Forget about her! She won’t be any good and she will cause you problems; she is arrogant,” was his reply. But de Hidalgo would not budge, telling the committee that she not only thought the candidate in question was an amazing talent, but that she would be happy to teach her and waive her tuition expenses entirely.

© CHARIS AKRIVIADIS

The portrait bust created

by Aspasia Papadoperaki on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the death of Maria Callas.

“ THERE’S SO MUCH YOU CAN DO WITH YOUR MIND. YOU DON’T ALWAYS NEED A PIANO; YOU DON’T E VEN HAVE TO OPEN YOUR MOUTH.” AT H E N S

Maria auditioned at the Athens Conservatoire with “Ocean, Thou Mighty Monster” from Weber’s Oberon, which she had performed three months earlier at the Parnassos Literary Society. It was a triumph. At the age of 16, she enrolled at the conservatoire as student No. 1862 and was awarded a scholarship.

Memorizing roles

From the very first day, Maria was a model student, completely dedicated to her studies, displaying great inner strength and a strong belief in her abilities. The words used to describe her during those years were often contradictory: dutiful, disciplined, conscientious, virtuous, but also rigid, egocentric, impertinent and abrupt. Many of her fellow students and tutors spoke of how she would enter and leave the classes without saying a word to anyone. “At first, she was the laughing stock of the conservatoire,” noted de Hidalgo in an interview in 1968. “My colleagues pitied me, while her fellow students teased her mercilessly. It is true that she was terribly awkward, plump, and with nothing endearing about her.”

Maria, however, was not discouraged. She would frequently arrive at her tutor’s home at 10 in the morning before heading off to continue her lessons at the conservatoire until late at night. She memorized entire works effortlessly and practiced even when far from the piano.

“I’d learned the roles from Norma and La Gioconda long before I could sing properly. In this way, I was able to think about the pieces even when on a bus or walking down the street. There’s so much you can do with your mind. You don’t always need a piano; you don’t even have to open your mouth.”

Maria lived with her mother, Evangelia (“Litsa”) Dimitriadou and her sister, Jackie, not far from the home of her vocal coach. One of their first houses was at 70 Harilaou Trikoupi Street. In 1939, they moved to a ground-floor three-room residence at 5 Marnis Street, but a few months later they moved to GREECE IS — 1 1 9

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the 5th floor of an Art Deco apartment building at 61 Patission Street.

“We don't know what would have happened if Callas had not met de Hidalgo,” says Louras. “The fact that she met her was of utmost importance for her development, as de Hidalgo provided her with all the necessary tools. She introduced her to an extensive repertoire, taught her the correct vocal placement, how to study, how to interpret roles, how to stand on stage, how to dress, how to walk, and how to express herself with her hands.”

Maria spent more time at her tutor’s house than her own. She attended the parties thrown by the Spanish coloratura soprano, usually at Christmas and Easter, and joined the trips to nearby beaches organized by de Hidalgo up until 1940. All the students at the conservatoire would meet up on weekends at 8 in the morning outside the Athens Eye Clinic on Sina Street to board the big open-top buses for Glyfada, Kavouri or Vouliagmeni. Maria was a keen swimmer. “You could see that she was in her element in the water,” her fellow students recalled. But even after a relaxing day at the seaside, on the return to Athens she would speak only about opera: the demands of each role, matters relating to acting, and the importance of having a good stage partner.

studies without distraction. Maria made her professional debut with the then recently established Greek National Opera during the 1940-1941 season, in the modest role of Beatrice in Franz von Suppé’s Boccaccio. In the same period, the Royal Theater staged a production of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice at the Ziller Building on Aghiou Konstantinou Street, with the celebrated Alexis Minotis in the role of Shylock. The production also included excerpts from Humperdinck’s opera Hansel and Gretel. Although there are no written accounts, it is possible that Maria sang some pieces from the stage wings. Callas herself reminded Minotis about it when she met up with him in Dallas in 1959. Shortly after, due to the threat of aerial bombardment, both the building on Aghiou Konstantinou and the Olympia Theater were closed, and all performances were staged at the Pallas Theater on Voukourestiou Street, which had a bomb shelter.

“A minimum income”

In 1939, Maria appeared for the first time at the Olympia Theater, now the Olympia Municipal Music Theater Maria Callas, in the role of Santuzza in a student production of Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana. At the end of 1939, de Hidalgo intervened on Maria’s behalf with the director of the Greek National Opera, suggesting he hire her as a member of the chorus but without her having to attend rehearsals or performances, in order to secure for her protégé a minimal income that would enable the girl to continue her 1 2 0 — GREECE IS

MARIA MADE HER PROFESSIONAL DEBUT WITH THE THEN RECENTLY ESTABLISHED GREEK NATIONAL OPERA IN THE 1940-1941 SE ASON IN THE MODEST ROLE OF BE ATRICE .

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On August 27th, 1942, Callas played the role of Tosca at the Summer Theater in Klafthmonos Square, and in the spring of 1944 played Marta in the opera Tiefland at the Olympia Theater. In July of the same year, she appeared for the first time at the ancient Odeon of Herodes Atticus, as Smaragda in Manolis Kalomiris’ The Master Builder. On August 14th, the eve of her name day, Maria returned to the stage of the Odeon, this time as Leonore in a Greek-language production of Beethoven’s Fidelio, under the musical direction of Hans Herner and directed by Oskar Wallek. Her performance garnered critical acclaim in the Greek and international press, with some critics declaring it to be her greatest triumph. Such praise undoubtedly made Callas start to think that Greece no longer sufficed for her ambitions.

She finally departed for New York in September 1945. “Callas knew from the beginning who she was. The Greek scene was too small for her potential.

She had such self-knowledge that, even at the age of 15, she knew she needed to leave Trivella and seek a teacher who could help her evolve, like Elvira de Hidalgo had done,” says Louras.

In 1957, Callas – who was by this point a global celebrity – returned to the Odeon of Herodes Atticus to perform a recital of opera arias by Donizetti, Verdi, Wagner, and Thomas. But she still harbored resentment against Philoctetes Economides, her former nemesis who had openly criticized her singing. In a letter to Achilleas Mamakis, then director of the Athens Festival, she wrote: “I have no problem with a Greek maestro directing in Athens, if that is what you wish. But it would be better if Mr. Economides, specifically, sat in the stands with the audience. He will thus have the opportunity to determine whether I do indeed have a voice.”

Searching for Callas

The judgment of history has come down on the side of Callas, but Greece

Searching for Callas itself was late in recognizing her genius.

Callas herself said in 1957 that Greece had left her feeling “bitter.” Today, 46 years after her demise, a bronze statue of the soprano by the sculptor Aspasia Papadoperaki, who also created her bust at the Athens Concert Hall, appears to “gaze at us” from Madritis Square behind the former Hilton Athens. Another statue, created by artist Aphrodite Liti based on one of Callas’s performances at La Scala in Milan, can be found on Dionysiou Areopagitou Street.

At the Megaro Moussikis metro station, Maria “greets” thousands of Athenian commuters as they head to the platforms just outside the Athens Concert Hall from the iconic photo of her legendary 1958 performance at Covent Garden as Violetta Valéry in the Verdi opera La Traviata. Callas played the character of the wayward heroine ten times in that year alone, out of a total of 63 times in her career.

Traces of hers also remain at the Maria Callas Museum in Athens, housed in a listed building on 44 Mitropoleos Street, which was opened to commemorate the centenary of her birth. The museum᾿s permanent exhibition features a variety of audio recordings from her acclaimed performances in international theaters, alongside a collection of her personal belongings, photographs, event programs, sheet music, and various publications related to her performances. There is also a documentary by musicologist Aris Christofellis available on GNO TV (www. nationalopera.gr/gnotv) that covers the repertoire that Callas sang from 1937 to 1945. Regarding the Papaleonardou apartment building (built in 1925) at 61 Patission Street, where she once resided, the Municipality of Athens has pledged to restore it and it’s expected to accommodate the Maria Callas Academy of Lyric Art.•

Ending Soon

Three notable exhibitions • “Unboxing Callas,” (until January 10, 2024, on the second floor of the National Library) showcases photographic material, letters exchanged with Pier Paolo Pasolini, rare vinyl records, and stage props from the renowned Pyromallis Collection and the Greek National Opera’s archives.

The exhibition engages in a dialogue with contemporary artworks inspired by her life and legacy.

• “Goodnight, I Love You” (until January 30, 2024, in the foyer of the Christos Lambrakis Hall at the Athens Concert Hall), features an intimate collection of Callas’ personal items, mementos, and costumes from the Nikos Haralambopoulos Collection.

• “Publications about Callas Worldwide” (until January 14, 2024, in the Atrium of the Greek National Library’s ground floor, Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center) includes books, magazines, stamps, academic papers, and programs of her performances from the collection of Benedict Gagelman. This collection highlights her enduring influence on a succession of generations.

Images and items uncovered during research for the documentary “Mary, Marianna, Maria.”

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MARIA CALLAS WAS OPERA’S DEFINING DIVA. SHE STILL IS.

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© AFP/VISUALHELLAS.GR

B Y Z A C H A R Y W O O L F E / T H E N E W YO R K T I M E S

Callas would have turned 100 on December 2nd. She and her flash of a career remain beacons of artistic integrity and profundity.

Maria Callas is applauded by the audience at the Odeon Theater in Paris, on January 5th, 1966.

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Maria Meneghini Callas (foreground) is enjoying herself as writer and socialite Elsa Maxwell plays the piano during a party in Venice, on September 3rd, 1957. Right: Callas sings in “Il Pirata” for the American Opera Society, December 27th, 1959.

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© AP PHOTO/JIM PRINGLE

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© BEN MARTIN/GETTY IMAGES/IDEAL IMAGE

Eternal Callas

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HER VOICE IS THE SHADOW that remains after shock, after

anger: the sound of a woman realizing she has nothing left to live for. It is the second act of Verdi’s opera “La Traviata.” Violetta and Alfredo, a prostitute and a wealthy young man, have fallen madly in love. But his father confronts her, demanding she drop the disreputable affair to salvage the marriage prospects of Alfredo’s sister.

For Violetta, it is an unbearable sacrifice, but she’ll do it.

“Dite alla giovine,” she sings, in a broken murmur: Tell your daughter that I will abandon the one good thing I have, for her sake. Singing that passage on May 28, 1955, at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, soprano Maria Callas reached the phrase about how “bella e pura” Alfredo’s sister is – how beautiful and pure – and inserted the tiniest breath before “pura.”

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© ROBERT DOISNEAU/GETTY IMAGES/IDEAL IMAGE

Maria Callas at the Salle Wagram in Paris for the recording of “Tosca” in December of 1964.

Eternal Callas

THE DEFINING DIVA OF THE 20TH CENTURY, CALL AS IS NOT SO FAR FROM US IN SOME WAYS; A NORMAL LIFE SPAN WOULD HAVE BROUGHT HER WELL INTO THE 21ST.

It’s a barely noticeable silence, but within it is a black hole of resignation.

Callas’ split-second pause achingly suggests Violetta knows that if she, too, were pure, her happiness would not be expendable. Tiny details like this are how Callas – who would have turned 100 on Dec. 2nd – gave opera’s overthe-top melodramas a startling sense of reality, and her characters the psychological depth and nuance of actual people. Tiny details like this, captured on hundreds of recordings, are how this most mythical of singers has stubbornly resisted drifting entirely into myth.

The defining diva of the 20th century, Callas is not so far from us in some ways; a normal life span would have brought her well into the 21st. Those many recordings – endlessly remastered, repackaged and rereleased – have kept her in our ears, the benchmark of what is possible in opera, musically and emotionally. Her dramatic art and dramatic life, often intertwined, have made her an enduring cultural touchstone: a coolly glamorous stare in Apple ads and the inspiration for plays (including a Tony Award winner), performances by Marina Abramovic (bad) and Monica Bellucci (worse), an upcoming film starring Angelina Jolie (we ’ll see), and even a hologram tour (sigh).

Yet Callas can also seem like a figure of faraway history. Her lonely death was back in 1977, when she was just 53 – and by then, her days of true performing glory were almost 20 years behind her. The number of people who saw her live, particularly in staged opera, is dwindling, and her short career was just early enough that precious little of it was filmed. So she has been for decades, for most of us, a creation of still images and audio. We have to use those tools to conjure what her performances were like, to complete them.

But when you hear her, this is surprisingly easy. You listen to that “Dite alla giovine” and immediately see, in her voice, the blankness of her face, the mouth barely moving and the rest a mask of surrender, the shoulders AT H E N S

collapsed. At the end of her classic 1953 “Tosca” recording, you can again “see” that indelible face, this time shifting in a couple of seconds from hushed excitement to catastrophic loss. (Listen to the sudden fear in that second cry of “Mario!”) With Callas, the aural always presses toward the visual; the voice, with its specificity and pungency, its weirdly death-haunted vitality, makes you imagine her body, moving in space. In her performances, there was never a sense of opera as mere entertainment, a night out with pretty music. She took every note seriously, where others fudged and coasted; she was refined where others were vulgar. In her powerfully expressive voice and magnetic presence, opera really, truly mattered.

Intuition and skill

Watch her perform “Tu che le vanità” from Verdi’s “Don Carlo” in concert in 1962, near the end of her career. You are aware even before she opens her mouth of opera’s founding paradoxes. She is grand, and honest; epic, and intimate. Opera in the modern era is at its core an exhumation of the past, a literal revival. Callas is the quintessential singer – she is opera – not because of her instrument or her acting, but because, with a combination of born intuition and carefully acquired skill, she imagined and reconstructed a vanished world.

She took on a whole repertory – the bel canto of the early 19th century, notably operas of Gaetano Donizetti, Vincenzo Bellini and Gioachino Rossini – that had been ignored or distorted for generations. And she approached pieces that had never left the public, like “La Traviata,” Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor” and Bellini’s “Norma,” as if they were being done for the first time. The title character of “Lucia,” then widely assumed to be a chirpy cipher, was in Callas’ throat a morbid, ecstatic Gothic heroine – more intense, and more believable. In the wake of World War II, she showed that Europe’s patrimony could emerge from the rubble.

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around like religious relics; ditto a Mexico City “Aida,” in which Callas stretched an old but rare interpolated high E flat to gleaming length at the end of the Triumphal Scene.

Her voice, matchlessly articulate and often quite beautiful but also idiosyncratic and fragile, didn’t hold out too long, and her career was brief; there was maybe a decade of prime singing, largely in the 1950s. By the time she was 40, it was essentially over.

The Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis with Callas in London, on June 24th, 1959.

Born in New York to Greek immigrants, Callas grew up listening to Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts and, at 13, returned with her mother to Greece. Just a year later, she was singing Carmen’s “Habanera” and Norma’s “Casta diva” as a conservatory student in Athens.

She had no real apprenticeship.

There were no supporting parts, no young-artist programs. By her early 20s, she was singing some of the most challenging roles in the repertory; by her early 30s, she was singing them all over the world. She made her name with outlandish feats, like doing Brünnhilde in Wagner’s “Die Walküre” and Elvira in Bellini’s “I Puritani” – which few sopranos paired in the same lifetime – in the same week. And once she became an object of worship, scratchy pirated recordings of a passionate “Traviata” from Lisbon, Portugal, were passed 1 2 8 — GREECE IS

LIVING MOSTLY IN SECLUSION, CALL AS BECAME FOR MANY A KIND OF SAINT OR MART YR, AN EMBODIMENT OF THE HOPELESSLY LOVING , DIRELY ABANDONED CHARACTERS SHE HAD PL AYED. WINTER 2023-2024

Brief – and unbelievably dense and tumultuous. Who knows the root of Callas’ restlessness, her insane commitment, her ferocity, her rivalries?

There was clearly a deeply ingrained sense of unworthiness that you could trace back to her difficult childhood, with a mother who openly preferred her prettier sister. Self-buttressing, self-hating, self-defeating, Callas needed the stage desperately, and yet she always needed to be pushed onto it. Her loss of some five or six dozen pounds in the early ’50s, slimming into one of the century’s most stylish women, made news, as did her dropping out midway through a “Norma” in Rome in 1958.

The year before, she had pleaded illness before missing a performance of Bellini’s “La Sonnambula” in Edinburgh, then was photographed at a swanky party in Venice. A lifetime later, it all seems so petty, but the venom that greeted these cancellations – hard to imagine today – helped usher in the end of Callas’ career.

She left her husband for shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, largely giving up performing in the process.

When Onassis eventually married Jackie Kennedy instead, Callas was alone and bereft, without either the vocation that had given her purpose or the man who had replaced it. Living mostly in seclusion, though always harboring hopes of returning to the stage, she became for many a kind of saint or martyr, an embodiment of the hopelessly loving, direly abandoned characters she had played.

© HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES/IDEAL IMAGE

Extreme emotion

Eternal Callas “Until the end,” a friend said, “she continued her vocal exercises.”

As Callas’ life fades ever further into the distance, her voice is more and more what we are left with. “Generally, I upset people the first time they hear me,” she told a biographer, “but I am usually able to convince them of what I am doing.”

Francesco Siciliani, an impresario who engaged Callas as she rose in the late 1940s, was right when he said, “Parts of the voice were beautiful, others empty.”

But the flaws that grew more prominent over time – the thinnesses and wobbles, the metallic harshness and questionable intonation – were, as she knew, usually convincing, not least because her sound, for all its troubles, was so instantly recognizable, and such a perfect vessel for extreme emotion. There was always that sense of every phrase being considered, without feeling studied – of a voice with a purpose.

We can see from photos the amazing ability of her face – and, perhaps just as important, her hands – to capture anguish, authority and charm. But among the most pernicious stereotypes about Callas is that she was an actress who could barely sing, who got by on charisma alone.

The records disprove this. Listen to her tender “O mio babbino caro.”

Listen to her delicate yet commanding “D’amor sull’ali rosee.” She was always a bel canto singer at heart. In the early 1970s, when she led a series of master classes at the Juilliard School, a student defended herself after a bad high note by saying it was meant as a cry of despair.

“It’s not a cry of despair,” Callas shot back. “It’s a B flat.”

It’s appropriate that this is the lasting image of her final years, and the theme of Terrence McNally’s Tony-winning play “Master Class”: Callas as a wise but overbearing, even fearsome teacher. She and those hundreds of recordings continue to teach, continue to loom over opera. Singers are still compared to her, especially those with compelling presences and voices on the acidic side.

Sixty years after Callas sang “Medea,” the star of a new production at the Met in 2021 said Callas’ legacy hadn’t stopped being the “elephant in the room.” Opera is still asking the question that writer Ethan Mordden recalled being posed by a friend back in 1969: “Is there life after Callas?”

Should there be? She and her flash of a career remain a beacon of artistic integrity and profundity – of the cultivation of tradition and craft, of a

desire to bring the past to bear on the present – in a culture that values those qualities less and less.

Costume designer Piero Tosi was there for her great “Traviata” at La Scala in 1955. “She scarcely seemed to be singing,” he said of her “Dite alla giovine.” “Yet everyone heard.”

Impossibly distant, yet immensely present: at her centennial, Callas still occupies a position in opera something like the sun.•

Callas caught by the lens of George Lehmann: the photo is part of the collection of the new Maria Callas Museum in Athens.

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BY COLLECTING LONG-FORGOTTEN © ELENI KALORKOTI

ARCHAEOLOGICAL DATA, A NEW PROJECT REVEALS THE RESEARCHERS WHO TOILED UNRECOGNIZED. B Y N I C K R O M E O / T H E N E W YO R K E R © C O N D É N A S T AT H E N S

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Standing, from left to right: Evi Sempou, Annita Theocharaki, Pavlos Habidis, Wanda Papaefthymiou, Maria Karagiannopoulou, Olga Voyatzoglou, Giorgos Sofianos, Leda Costaki. Seated, from left to right: Maria Pigaki and Christina Giannakoula.

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In Don DeLillo’s 1982 novel “The Names,” an American businessman living in Athens can’t quite bring himself to visit its most iconic monument. “For a long time, I stayed away from the Acropolis,” he says. “It daunted me, that somber rock.” He prefers “to wander in the modern city, imperfect, blaring”; when he catches sight of the Acropolis from odd angles, he finds its exalted reputation forbidding.

“The ruins stood above the hissing traffic like some monument to doomed expectations,” he observes.

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T TODAY, MOST TOURISTS have

no such hesitancy: in the summer, as many as 20,000 visit the Acropolis each day. And yet, after millennia of human habitation, Athenian history isn’t confined to a few famous spots.

Over the last two centuries, as the city has grown from a sleepy village to a sprawling capital, new ruins have been continually discovered. Greek national law requires so-called rescue excavations before the construction of new houses, buildings, subway lines, sewer systems, or almost anything else; while these are faster and less comprehensive than the research excavations conducted for purely archaeological reasons, they can still reveal the locations of shrines, wells, walls, roads and cemeteries, as well as smaller artifacts, such as oil lamps, toys and loom weights. Collectively, all of this material constitutes a kind of secret history of the city.

Until recently, information from these rescue excavations was sequestered in a vast gray literature of reports published in Greek by the state archaeological service. But, in 2014, a group of Greek archaeologists and a cartographer launched an organization called the Dipylon Society, which aims to share these discoveries more widely. Dipylon has undertaken a series of fascinating, high-tech projects, including digital 1 3 4 — GREECE IS

maps, searchable databases, and free mobile apps with guided walking tours.

Its first app, Walk the Wall Athens, appeared in 2018. It leads users through a twisting six-kilometer course, past 35 locations where parts of the ancient city’s walls survive. The route snakes through the basements of hotels and apartment buildings, beneath shops and through parking garages, connecting points where the 2500-year-old monumental walls are still accessible. At these hidden spots, the app allows you to see historical photos, read key findings from the rescue excavations, and hear an audio narration in Greek or English.

Dipylon’s projects reflect years spent gathering, digitizing, and synthesizing data from almost 1500 rescue excavations conducted in Athens over the past 160 years; it has changed our understanding of the city’s archaeology. But, by recovering one sort of lost history, Dipylon has revealed another.

During Athens’ most explosive decades of growth, the archaeologists who ran excavations for the state archaeological

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Drone footage of Kotzia Square, where the digitized representation of the archaeological remains is presented in green.

Enquiry service were predominantly female; their work was often unheralded and unacknowledged. Now, in digital form, it’s coming to light.

On a sunny morning last fall, I joined a wall walk led by Annita Theocharaki, a founding member of Dipylon. A tall, curly-haired woman in her early sixties, Theocharaki runs a family business by day; Dipylon, which now has a full-time staff of six, is a lasting passion project she helps run on nights and weekends. We met at Kotzia Square, a pedestrian plaza fringed with leafy trees and charming neoclassical buildings. A dozen students had gathered outside a gated enclosure, inside which stone embankments lined a stretch of old road barely the width of a bike path.

“Imagine a road continuing directly beneath us toward the walls,” she said, sweeping her arms in a diagonal from where we stood to the edge of Kotzia Square. The students shifted their gaze to follow her hands. “You can see the burials on either side of the road,” she continued, gesturing to bits of pale

stone beside the path – actually parts of weathered burial shafts and stone sarcophagi from a cemetery dating back to the 8th century BC. “It’s common to find cemeteries just outside the city walls, but placing graves right beside the road was also about display,” she said.

“Anyone walking in or out of the city would see all the funerary monuments.”

As she spoke, the sun moved across the site, bathing the pale stone and red dirt in the early morning light.

Ancient fortifications

We followed Theocharaki across the square, tracing the path of the old road that ran invisibly beneath us. At the corner, tucked underneath the looming façade of the National Bank of Greece, an open-air site plunged some twenty feet below the modern city; inside this pit was a massive section of the ancient wall from the 4th century BC. More of the wall was visible under glass panels on the sidewalk. Although it is now far below the level of the modern city, it

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was likely around ten meters high in the 4th century BC and still stands at half that height. “Fortification was just as important as the Acropolis or the Agora,” Theocharaki said as we looked down. “It was not only a matter of protection – the walls were also beautiful, monumental structures. Something citizens could admire.”

From there, our path grew stranger.

In the underground parking lot of a bank, a massive wall section rose beside us in the shadows as we walked down a sloping concrete ramp. (According to one of Plato’s dialogues, Socrates once walked past this spot on an ancient ring road.) A few blocks away, we descended into a subterranean warren of busy printers’ shops. Theocharaki told some workmen we wanted to see the wall, and one began to clear aside piles of posters and paint-splattered buckets cluttering the corridor. Once he finished, we peered through a steel grate and saw the pale, chiseled blocks winding away into the darkness. “I can’t believe it’s here,” a student said.

Dipylon originated in the early 2000s, when Theocharaki met another archaeologist, Leda Costaki, in the stacks of a research library in Athens.

Both women had recently finished their dissertations: Theocharaki’s on Athens’ ancient walls, Costaki’s on the city’s ancient roads. “Dipylon” was the name of the main gate in classical Athens – a place where walls and roads meet. They thought they’d combine their interests by creating a map of the roads and walls of the city. But they gradually began to imagine something more ambitious: gathering information from rescue excavations in one place. As they set to work, the project’s true scope soon became clear. Not only did they have to analyze and digitize a huge amount of material, but they also wanted attractive digital interfaces, a complex database structure, and free mobile apps. They organized the Dipylon Society as a nonprofit to help secure grant funding and support a small full-time staff of designers, coders, archaeologists, and a philologist.

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By pulling together the rescue-excavation data, Dipylon also explored the social history of archaeology in Greece.

In the first half of the twentieth century, archaeologists often prized artifacts more for their aesthetic qualities than for the social and historical information they might supply; even human skeletal remains were sometimes disregarded.

Specific periods were valued more than others: in some early excavation reports, state archaeologists called the Classical period “the beautiful years,” while the Roman era was considered of lesser worth. The Byzantine and Ottoman periods – during which Greece was part of the Eastern Roman and Ottoman Empires – lacked the cultural cachet of Classical Athens and were often ignored.

The emphasis was on monumental architecture or on painted pottery, jewelry, or sculpture that might be displayed in a museum – not on roads, walls, and simple objects of daily use.

Such objects were still unearthed, however, often by female archaeologists, who were less likely to have the option of an academic career. In the ’90s, jobs in Greece’s state archaeological service were often offered on a contract basis, and women tended to fill these nonpermanent positions, which came without benefits. Understaffed, poorly compensated, and facing ferocious pressure from landowners eager to start building, state archaeologists usually went unrecognized, their reports often signed only by their supervisors.

In the courtyard café of the Numismatic Museum of Athens – a beautiful three-story neoclassical mansion that was once the residence of Heinrich Schliemann, a German businessman and amateur archaeologist – I had coffee with Olga Voyatzoglou, who worked on rescue excavations for the state service in Athens in the 1970s and again in the ’90s. Now in her seventies, Voyatzoglou is a petite woman with a soft voice and quick smile. As she told me about her years in the archaeological service, it became clear that she and Schliemann were opposites in many 1 3 6 — GREECE IS

ways. Schliemann, who excavated at Troy and Mycenae, was internationally famous and bankrolled by a vast private fortune; he was more a treasure hunter than an archaeologist. Voyatzoglou was relatively obscure, interested in systematic research, and supported by meager public funds.

In the ’70s, Voyatzoglou said, she supervised rescue excavations near the site of Plato’s Academy. Athens was in the midst of a construction boom, and landowners had to pay labor costs for the teams of excavators she supervised. “This was a very big problem,” she sighed.

“Because the owner is paying, they don’t want to lose money, so they always say, ‘Go faster.’” Some landowners would begin construction illegally, digging the foundations of buildings themselves and destroying the archaeology; others pressured her team to excavate only to a certain depth, fearing that they might find something. On a typical day, she directed workers at three to four sites simultaneously while trying to protect and document the material being unearthed. She worked six days a week, with only Sundays off. When artifacts were discovered that might attract looters such as a burial with expensive grave goods, police were posted to guard the sites overnight.

DIPYLON’S PROJECTS REFLECT YE ARS SPENT G ATHERING , DIGITIZING , AND SYNTHESIZING DATA FROM ALMOST 1500 RESCUE E XCAVATIONS CONDUCTED IN ATHENS OVER THE PAST 160 YE ARS. WINTER 2023-2024

“Somebody else would have gone to get a coffee,” she said. “Not me; I was always there.” Still, despite the difficulties, she loved the work. “Every day, you go in expecting to find something new.”

She oversaw excavations at well over a hundred sites during her time in the service, yet only a small fraction of the recovered material is likely to appear in a museum. The rest languishes in longterm storage, its significance buried in excavation reports that, before Dipylon, were accessible only to specialists.

The city as museum

In 2021, Dipylon launched a project called Mapping Ancient Athens. An interactive tool, it layers data from the Neolithic through the modern period on a searchable map. You can explore houses in the Byzantine period, religious and cult locations in the Roman period, or water systems in the Ottoman period, browsing relevant information from the original rescue excavations. Click on the location of the Greek parliament building downtown, and you learn that, in the Hellenistic period (323-31 BC), the site was likely a fullery – a place where sheep’s wool was processed and dyed red and blue. Nearby, under a popular vegan restaurant, a three-aisled Byzantine church is buried, with a gray marble floor dating to the tenth century AD. Museums are usually discrete sites within a city. But Mapping Ancient Athens turns the whole city into an exploded museum, with every shop and corner harboring relics from a vanished world. This city-as-museum model highlights the precise, often-forgotten work of archaeologists such as Voyatzoglou.

Dipylon’s newest project is a guided walking tour through some of the neighborhoods where Voyatzoglou once worked. Launched in May, the free Walk to Plato’s Academy app starts on a busy street near the original Dipylon gate and traces the route of an ancient road that winds through the modern city to the site of the Academy, today a sprawling park. Before the launch,

Enquiry I joined a small team for a test walk.

The first person to arrive was Pavlos Habidis, a well-known Greek artist.

In consultation with Dipylon’s archaeologists, Habidis had painted a series of watercolors imagining historical landscapes and buildings, and Dipylon had incorporated them into the app.

Theocharaki and Costaki soon arrived, along with Maria Karagiannopoulou, an archaeologist, and Spyros Mousouris, a Web developer.

When we reached the first of fifteen points along the walk, we stopped beside a noisy intersection. Holding up our phones, we began slowly turning in circles. On our screens, a panoramic watercolor by Habidis rotated 360 degrees. The painting lets us gaze into the area as it might have looked in the 19th century. There was a green meadow, a cluster of orangish clay buildings, and a pale road leading to a grove of trees. Inky hills faded into a distant blue sky. For a moment, the roar of motorcycles and the concrete, graffiti-covered buildings seemed to fade away.

“You know, that’s not bad!”

Habidis said, looking up and smiling. It was the first time he had seen his artwork digitized inside the app.

We walked a few blocks to the next stop. Across the street, a construction crew worked with a bulldozer behind a blue steel fence. The archaeologists all began speaking at once: “What was being built? Had they gotten the proper authorization?” It is believed that the area used to have a sanctuary dedicated to the goddess Artemis, and earlier excavations had uncovered an inscribed stone recording a fourth-century B.C. mortgage on a house and a tavern. If something new was being built, this required a new rescue excavation.

We crossed the street to take a closer look. A tall man in work boots and a puffy green jacket walked over.

“We’re archaeologists,” Karagiannopoulou said. “Not from the service, but we’re making this app based on rescue archaeology.” He nodded, looking slightly confused.

“When were there excavations here?” she asked.

“September of 2022,” he said. “The owner didn’t want a basement; they didn’t go very deep.”

“What will the new building be?”

Karagiannopoulou asked.

“A restaurant,” he said.

“There was a tavern here in antiquity!” she said before explaining more about Dipylon.

He nodded, still unsure why a group of archaeologists was so interested in the site.

“We have to check the new excavation reports,” Costaki said as we left.

We passed modern apartment blocks with laundry fluttering from their balconies, butcher shops and trendy cafés, and crumbling neoclassical buildings from the nineteenth century, many abandoned and covered in scrawls of graffiti. Though close to downtown, we didn’t see a single tourist. “People were telling us, ‘Oh, you can’t take tourists to that part of Athens,” Costaki said. “It’s run-down. It’s dirty. But that’s life. I mean, that’s Athens. It’s not only the Acropolis and the glorious monuments.”

In the shadow of a looming highway overpass, as the roar of engines and the stench of exhaust drifted down, we gazed at Habidis’s mellow rendering of a nineteenth-century olive mill which had once stood there. For most of the past two and half millennia, modern buildings hadn’t obstructed the view; the Acropolis would have been visible from every point on the walk. Turning my phone, I saw a small Parthenon atop a white-and-mauve rock in Habidis’s painting. By sliding a finger across the screen, it was possible to choose between contemporary and historical views. There was an intermediate zone where the two blurred into a palimpsest, the rich specificity of the past hovering, faintly visible, beneath the modern street. By the end of the walk, this visual effect had become a state of consciousness. Beneath the seductive surface of the present, there’s always something older – the cool of a vanished stream, the clay of a potter’s workshop, the stones of a country villa, the grave of a young man buried with a flute and a lyre. Even archaeology itself has a past that can flicker back to life.•

Pavlos Habidis’ sketch, a fanciful depiction of three philosophers under the shade of a plane tree, created for the app “Walk to Plato’s Academy.”

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We trace the path of ancient marble from Davelis Cave on Mt Pendeli to the slope of the Acropolis for the construction of the Parthenon.

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Below: Walking the ancient path. Left: A sketch by Manolis Korres, from the book “From Pendeli to the Parthenon” (Melissa Publishing House), illustrates the process of extracting marble from Mt Pendeli.

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I I N T H E S U N S H I N E , the marble

stones are dazzlingly bright. The harsh sounds of tools intermingle with human voices as the stonemasons discuss the day’s work or make casual conversation.

Pieces of marble that have been separated with care from the mountain’s embrace rest on the Attican soil, while craftsmen prepare for their long, painful, and hazardous journey to the Acropolis.

The enormous marble stones are guided with care to the beginning of the road along which they will be transported down the mountain via a method of controlled rolling. Then they will reach the “lithagogias” (or “stone-bearing”) road, where they will be loaded onto carts destined for the construction site of the Parthenon. The excavations and studies of archaeologists have brought enough evidence to light to enable us to imagine scenes from the day-to-day work at Davelis Cave (aka “Amomon Cave”) on Mt Pendeli in the mid-5th century BCE. Today, two-and-a-half millennia later, stonemasons have abandoned Mt Pendeli’s ancient quarry for good. In the area around the cave – which remains a popular spot for weekend excursions – one encounters cyclists, carefree hikers, motocross bikers, families laden with picnicking gear, and, of course, rock climbers; the climbing routes of Davelis Cave are among the oldest and more well-known in Attica. A couple is enjoying the November sunshine on the plateau in front of Davelis Cave this early Sunday morning. Inside the 1 4 0 — GREECE IS

cave, a small group of friends take in the space, while one of them recounts myths, legends, and stories. These include how the brigand Christos Davelis once had his hideout here (a fact that has never been confirmed); the works that were carried out during the military dictatorship (1967-74) and late 1970s by the Ministry of National Defence; how, in antiquity, there was a temple here dedicated to the god Pan; and how during the Byzantine era it was a monks’ hermitage (the source of the name “Amomon Cave”). There is even a conspiracy theory that connects it to satanic rituals. The cave is impressive, with an almost mystical atmosphere.

Gazing at the walls and the jagged ceiling full of stalactites, one feels a certain sense of wonder. The first to discover it were the ancient craftsmen who extracted the marble that would be used as material for the construction of the Parthenon. They created the entrance to the cave, and it is said that a portion of the cave itself was created by the excavations of the stonemasons over the years.

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The marble road

While the cave itself is well known to the residents of both the immediate and the broader area, there's much less public awareness of the old marble road which begins just a few meters away and is as close as one can get to a journey back in time to the Golden Age of Athens and the creation of its greatest monument.

In total, over 20,000 tons of Pentelic marble were used in the construction of the Parthenon. The beginning of the road of “katagogi” (“descent”) is marked by a fallen marble column. The way is littered with slippery pieces of Pentelic marble, small and large, which reflect the light of the sun as it climbs higher in the sky. It is rather stunning to realize that nearly 2500 years ago, on this same path, one could hear the marble being rolled down to the waiting carts, while the surrounding steep mountainsides echoed with the cries of the workers who’d taken on the mammoth task of transporting it to the building site. It’s estimated the journey took about six hours in total.

The ancient road has long been known to historians and archaeologists.

The route was described by Manolis Korres, professor of historical architecture at the National Technical University of Athens and head of the Acropolis Restoration Service, in his book "From Pendeli to the Parthenon" (Melissa Publishing House, 1994): “The transport route began from the bottom of the road of the ‘katagogi’; it followed the right bank of the creek of Halandri over a distance of about four kilometers, then the left bank for a distance of another four, after which it approached the route of Kifisias Avenue, overlapping with a section of it, and then through what today is the National Garden and the southern slope of the Acropolis. It ended immediately past the Sanctuary of the Nymphe at an elevation of 96 meters where it intersected with another road, which (running along the western side of the Odeon of Herodes Atticus) led to the Acropolis.” More recent excavations and finds support his descriptions.

Above: The path bordering the stream is stunning, but quite slippery in some spots.

Right: Holes for securing the wooden pegs to which craftsmen tied ropes to slow the descent of the marble.

Below: The entrance to Davelis Cave.

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The charming nursery near the stone bridge on Asklipiou Street in Melissia.

A well-kept secret

If you decide to walk down from the cave on the old marble road, note that the way forks after about 250 meters.

You should follow the left, narrower, and more downhill path, taking care as it is quite steep. It is easy to see that this is the continuation of the route, as it is strewn with pieces of marble, while the right branch is a dirt road. Make sure to take in the views as you walk, but watch your step, too. From this elevation you can see all of Athens laid out before you, with the sea in the distance and the slopes of Mt Pendeli around you. After about half a kilometer – estimate roughly 700 meters from the start of the ancient road – there’s a well-hidden secret. A few meters past a pine tree growing in the middle of the path, the path curves 1 4 2 — GREECE IS

MAKE SURE TO TAKE IN THE VIE WS AS YOU WALK , BUT WATCH YOUR STEP, TOO. FROM THIS ELE VATION YOU CAN SEE ALL OF ATHENS L AID OUT BEFORE YOU, WITH THE SE A IN THE DISTANCE .

WINTER 2023-2024

to the left. Right at this bend, look for a small pine tree on the left and you’ll see the well-hidden entrance to a very narrow path that’s partly overgrown, with large stones scattered around. Proceed carefully, and look for some large square holes on the rocks to your left. Wooden supports, to which ropes were fastened to regulate the marble stones' descent, were placed in these holes. The holes are about 30 centimeters wide and 35-40 centimeters deep.

Returning to the path, a descent of about another half kilometer takes you to a dirt road that will lead you to Perikleous Street. Makeshift signs in red, yellow, and blue paint that indicate you are on the correct path can be seen at various places on the big rocks in the center and near the trail's edge. The vegetation is limited to small trees and bushes which

Pendeli offer no shade – if you take your walk on a warm, sunny day, make sure to have a hat with you – but soften the look of the landscape. Here and there, persistent wildflowers and aromatic herbs grow, spreading familiar scents.

Walking the entire length of Perikleous Street, you’ll pass Tristrato – the point where three paths meet – where you can hear the hum of the electricity pylons there, a sound that resembles the babble of a brook or the rustling of leaves. You're now moving through a residential area, heading for the confluence of Perikleous and Iroon Polytechniou streets near the square of Nea Pendeli. Turn left here, follow Alexandrou Panagouli Street and cross the stone bridge with care, as the sidewalk is quite narrow. About ten meters after the crossing you’ll see the entrance to a path on your right. This path, about two kilometers in length, has been signposted by the nature lovers’ group Vrilissos and will lead you to the area of Aghia Marina in the district of Melissia in about 45 minutes.

An idyllic refuge

The contrast between the rocky terrain of the mountain and the lush vegetation alongside the creek is fascinating. The path is shady, flanked by tall trees and lined with bushes and seasonal flowers. At different points, the creek itself is visible: a rivulet of water flowing gently along the base of a gully. If you follow this route in the winter or spring, the flow of water is greater and its sound cool and soothing, an idyllic refuge just a few meters away from the noise of the city.

There are both uphill and downhill stretches, with some of the latter being particularly treacherous due to fallen leaves and pine needles. Despite the fact that ropes have been fixed at one or two locations for you to grab and progress securely, having walking sticks and, of course, the right shoes – hiking boots are preferable – will help. Sturdy footwear will be particularly useful at the points where the path meets the stream and you need to step in the creekbed to continue your walk.

Along the route you’ll encounter a charming plant nursery, near the stone bridge of Asklipiou Street. A few minutes further on from there, you’ll reach Aghia Marina and the end of this section of the creek. From there, take Palaion Latomeion Street to reach the impressive five-arched, marble Doukissis Plakentias bridge (Greek for “Duchess of Plaisance”). This allwhite bridge was built in 1836 out of Pentelic marble; its construction was funded by the Duchess of Plaisance, Sophie de Marbois-Lebrun. This is the oldest surviving bridge in Athens and was also used for the transport of marble in the first half of the 19th century – this time for the construction of Athens’ royal palaces when, by order of King Otto, the Pendeli Quarry was re-opened.

A short distance from the bridge is Thyras Park, where you can relax and rest from your walk, thankful that you’re not a 5th-century BC worker hauling marble all the way to the Acropolis, a further 14 kilometers away.•

Davelis Cave

ANO MELISSIA

NEA PENDELI MELISSIA Nea Pendeli Square

© PHILIPPOS AVRAMIDES

Aghia Marina

Perikleous

Alexandros Panagoulis Pendeli-Halandri Creek

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