Athens City

“The cradle of Western civilization and the birthplace of democracy”

Athens the capital and largest city of Greece, dominates the Attica periphery; as one of the world’s oldest cities, its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. The oldest known human presence in Athens is the Cave of Schist which has been dated to between the 11th and 7th millennium BC. Athens has been continuously inhabited for at least 7000 years.

By 1400 BC the settlement had become an important center of the Mycenaean civilization and the Acropolis was the site of a major Mycenaean fortress whose remains can be recognized from sections of the characteristic Cyclopean walls. Unlike other Mycenaean centers, such as Mycenae and Pylos, it is not known whether Athens city suffered destruction in about 1200 BC, an event often attributed to a Dorian invasion, and the Athenians always maintained that they were “pure” Ionians with no Dorian element. However, Athens, like many other Bronze Age settlements, went into economic decline for around 150 years following this.

Athens National Gardens

Iron Age burials, in the Kerameikos and other locations, are often richly provided for and demonstrate that from 900 BC onwards Athens City was one of the leading centers of trade and prosperity in the region; as were Lefkandi in Euboea and Knossos in Crete. This position may well have resulted from its central location in the Greek world, its secure stronghold on the Acropolis and its access to the sea, which gave it a natural advantage over inland rivals such as Thebes and Sparta.

Classical Athens was a powerful city-state. A centre for the arts, learning and philosophy, home of Plato’s Academy and Aristotle’s Lyceum, it is widely referred to as the cradle of Western civilization and the birthplace of democracy, largely due to the impact of its cultural and political achievements during the 5th and 4th centuries BC on the rest of the then known European continent. Classical Athens became the leading city of Ancient Greece in the 5th century BC, with its cultural achievements laying the foundations of Western civilization. It was eventually overcome by its rival city-state of Sparta. The heritage of the classical era is still evident in the city, represented by a number of ancient monuments and works of art, the most famous of all being the Parthenon, widely considered a key landmark of early Western civilization. An impressive monument of that time is also the Panathinaiko stadium.

The Panathinaiko or Panathenaic Stadium, also known as the Kallimarmaro (the “beautifully marbled”), is the only major stadium in the world built entirely of white marble (from Mount Penteli). The stadium was built long before

Panathinaiko Stadium

dimensions for athletics venues were standardized and its track and layout follow the ancient hairpin-like model. It could seat about 80,000 spectators on 50 rows of marble steps and currently holds 45,000 spectators. In ancient times, it was used to host the athletic portion of the Panathenaic Games, in honour of the Goddess Athena. During classical times, the stadium had wooden seating. It was remade in marble, by the archon Lycurgus, in 329 BC and was enlarged and renovated by Herodes Atticus, in 140 AD, to a seated capacity of 50,000. The remnants of the ancient structure were excavated and refurbished, with funds provided by Evangelis Zappas for the revival of the Olympic Games. The stadium was refurbished a second time in 1895 for the 1896 Olympics, with completion funding provided by the Greek benefactor George Averoff (whose marble statue now stands at the entrance), based on designs by architects Anastasios Metaxas and Ernst Ziller.

By the end of Late Antiquity the city experienced decline followed by recovery in the second half of the Middle Byzantine Period (9th-10th centuries AD), and was relatively prosperous during the Crusades, benefiting from Italian trade. In 1453 it was conquered by the Ottoman Empire and entered a long period of decline. The Athens city also retains a vast variety of Roman and Byzantine monuments, as well as a smaller number of remaining Ottoman monuments projecting the city’s long history across the centuries.

Parliament

One of landmarks of the city is the Temple of Olympian Zeus, also known as the Olympieion, is a colossal ruined temple in the centre of Athens City that was dedicated to Zeus, king of the Olympian gods. Construction began in the 6th century BC during the rule of the Athenian tyrants, who envisaged building the greatest temple in the ancient world, but it was not completed until the reign of the Roman Emperor Hadrian in the 2nd century AD some 638 years after the project had begun. During the Roman periods it was renowned as the largest temple in Greece and housed one of the largest cult statues in the ancient world. Nearby is the Arch of Hadrian which was erected in 132 AD as a gate between the ancient city and the Roman city of Athens.

Athens City re-emerged in the 19th century as the capital of the independent Greek state. The Athens City was then a decadent village but it was selected to be the capital of Greece because of the proposal of Kleanthis and Schaubert and a strong need to incorporate the glorious past of ancient Greece in the new state’s rationale. The new city’s plan was proposing the incorporation of the ancient remains in the new city axes. The main part of the existing village was on the Parthenon. Concerning the first modern city plans, a triangle defined by important places —the Parthenon, the ancient cemetery of Kerameikos or the new palace of the Bavarian king — demonstrated a historic continuation that immediately related modern Athens City to the glorious time of ancient Greece.

Neoclassicism, the international style of this epoch, was the architectural style through which Bavarian, French and Greek architects such as Hansen, Klenze, Boulanger or Kaftantzoglou designed the first important public buildings of the new capital. During the 1920s a number of Greek refugees, expelled from Asia Minor after the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922), swelled Athens’ population; nevertheless it was most particularly following World War II, and from the 1950s and 1960s, that the population of the city exploded, and Athens experienced a gradual expansion in all directions. In the 1980s it became evident that smog from factories and an ever increasing fleet of automobiles, as well as a lack of adequate free space due to overcongestion, had evolved into the city’s most important challenge. A series of anti-pollution measures taken by the city’s authorities in the 1990s, combined with a substantial improvement of the city’s infrastructure (including the Attiki Odos motorway, the expansion of the Athens Metro, and the new Athens International Airport), considerably alleviated pollution and transformed Athens into a much more functional city.

A cosmopolitan metropolis, modern Athens City is central to economic, financial, industrial, political and cultural life in Greece and it is rated as an alpha-world city. In 2008, Athens was ranked the world’s 32nd richest city by purchasing power. Athens is home to two UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the Acropolis of Athens and the medieval Daphni Monastery.

Temple of Olympian Zeus

Landmarks of the modern era, dating back to the establishment of Athens City as the capital of the independent Greek state in 1830, include:
Hellenic Parliament (19th century) is the Parliament of Greece, located in the Parliament House (Old Royal Palace), overlooking Syntagma Square. Parliament was housed in the Old Parliament House, on Stadiou Street, from 1875 to 1932. The current building, a neoclassical three-floor structure designed by Friedrich von Gärtner and completed in 1843, originally served as a palace for the Greek monarchs. After suffering fire damage in 1909, it entered a long period of renovation. Members of the royal family continued to reside there until 1924, when a referendum abolished the monarchy. The building was then used for many different purposes — functioning as a makeshift hospital and a museum, among other things — until November 1929, when the government decided that the building would instead house the Parliament. After more extensive renovations, the Senate convened in the “Old Palace” on 2 August 1934, followed by the Fifth National Assembly on 1 July 1935. Although the monarchy was restored that same year, the building has housed the Parliament ever since. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, guarded by the Evzones of the Presidential Guard, is located in the formal forecourt of the building. Construction of the monument began in 1929 and was inaugurated on March 25, 1932.

Old Parliament was the first permanent residence of the Greek Parliament. Queen Amalia laid its foundation stone in 1858, and it was built according to the plans of Francois Boulanger, which were later modified by the Greek architect Panayotis Kalkos. The Greek Parliament sat in the Old Parliament Building from 1875 to 1932. After the transfer of the Parliament to the Old Palace (today’s Parliament Building), it was assigned by prime minister Eleftherios Venizelos, to permanently house the National Historical Museum, an institution whose work is interwoven with the historical identity of the building.

The Athens Trilogy consisting of the neo-classical buildings National Library of Greece, Academy of Athens and Athens University was designed by the Danish architect Theophil Freiherr von Hansen in 1859 but the project was not completed until 1885. The National Library holds 4,500 Greek manuscripts which is one of the greatest collections of Greek scripts. There are also many chrysobulls and archives of the Greek Revolution. The Academy of Athens is Greece’s national academy, and the highest research establishment in the country. The original building of the Athens University serves as the ceremony hall and rectory. The sculptures were undertaken by the Greek Leonidas Drosis, while the murals and paintings by the Austrian Christian Griepenkerl.

Athens National Historical Museum (Old Parliament)

The highest elevation in the city centre of Athens is Mount Lycabettus. Lycabettus is a Cretaceous limestone hill. At 277 meters (908 feet) above sea level, the hill offers a good view of all the sights of Athens City that surround it. Pine trees cover its base, and at its peak are the 19th century Chapel of St. George, a large open-air theater, which has housed many Greek and International concerts and a restaurant. The hill is a popular tourist destination and can be ascended by the Lycabettus Funicular, a funicular railway which climbs the hill from a lower terminus at Kolonaki. Lycabettus appears in various legends. Popular stories suggest it was once the refuge of wolves, possibly the origin of its name (which means “the one (the hill) that is walked by wolves”). Mythologically, Lycabettus is credited to Athena, who created it when she dropped a mountain she had been carrying from Pallene for the construction of the Acropolis after the box holding Erichthonius was opened.

Athens was the host city of the first modern-day Olympic Games in 1896, and 108 years later it welcomed home the 2004 Summer Olympics. Athens is home to the National Archeological Museum, featuring the world’s largest collection of ancient Greek antiquities, as well as the New Acropolis Museum.

Additional Information
Athens is the capital of Greece

Visiting places on Organized tours

It is famous about
Acropolis of Athens, Parthenon, Panathinaiko Stadium, Temple of Olympian Zeus, Arch of Hadrian, National Library, Academy of Athens, Athens University, Mount Lycabettus, National Archaeological Museum, New Acropolis Museum,
Host city of the first modern Olympic Games in 1896, 2004 Olympic Games
It is one of the world’s oldest cities, It is the birthplace of democracy