ATHENS

Athens yesterday, today, tomorrow.
Antiquity
The ancient writers report that Athens was "thin grounded" that means rather stony and full of under ground waters. Characteristic features of Athens, nearly up to today, have been: 1. The beauty of the landscape, 2. Its distance from the large transportation routes that have traditionally connected northern and southern Greece and 3. The natural defensibility of certain points, such as the Acropolis. It is easy, therefore, to understand why this particular region was settled and densely inhabited even in prehistoric times. These same features may also explain the great development that ensued, the political, economic and cultural power and the political and intellectual center of antiquity. The texts of ancient writers provide information on daily life in Athens, the types of housing, the temples, the sports and entertainment facilities, the natural green and water resources of the city.

Period of the Roman Rule
Rome conquered Greece and the entire known world of that time. The Cultural power of Athens enabled it to play a special and unexpected role at the end of the pre-Christian era, when Rome became the world ruler and imposed its own form of globalization, the pax romana. The heart of the Roman Empire beat in Italy, its nerves were the bias that connected the Imperial Seat with the remote provinces of that time and its mind, which controlled its way of life, was firmly located in Athens.

The Roman authorities presumably found in the Athenian way of thinking the ideological basis they needed.
That is why the emperors protected and actively supported the teaching of Athenian philosophers. The philosopher-emperor Marcus Aurelius even undertook the financing of their projects.
This gesture testifies to the fact that, contrary to the established view that the first universities operated in Medieval Europe, the first one actually operated in Athens financed by the Roman state. Indeed, Marcus Aurelius instituted the regular payment from the city fund of the professors who taught in its schools. Thus, Athens remained for centuries a spiritual center. It was for this reason that the main battlefield between the old religion and Christianity was not Rome but Athens. It is Athens that the last idolater Emperor Julianus (361-363), praised, it is in Athens that Basilius the Great, Bishop of Caesarea (known as St Basil) and other great Christian theoreticians of the 4century continued their studies.

Byzantium
The cruelest, and last, phase against the ancient beliefs took place in Athens. Philosophers, professors and other spiritual people remained faithful to their beliefs. Their teachings did not fade out but ended in a violent, one could say manner.
The end came with a state decision, an imperial decree. With the passing of time, people stopped having the need for the type of education, the main characteristics of which had been formulated during the classical period. It was then that the fall of the ancient world was accomplished.
The closing down of the University of Athens at the times of Emperor Justinian (527-565) was the final stroke.

We do not know precisely when this change took place. However, the flourishing of Christian life in Athens constitutes evidence of the new era.
Two Athenian women embody the beliefs of Byzantium, on the one side those of the transitional period and on the other side those of the new era: Athinais and Irene. Athinais was the daughter of the Athenian philosopher Leontios and she was married to emperor Theodosius II (408-450). She was baptized and named Evdokia.
This marriage shows the respect, which the Byzantine court continued to demonstrate for the philosophers of the Athenian schools. Irene the Athenian lived in the 8 century.
She was the wife of Emperor Leon IV (775-780) and mother of Emperor Constantine VI (780-790).
She held the imperial office from 797 until 802. Under the rule of empress Irene, a whole world gained a voice in the Reigning City (Constantinople) and the attention of the rulers stopped being exclusively focused on the East.
Irene the Athenian ended the icon-fighting (iconoclasm) policy, which had been pursued by the Isauri Emperors and managed to re-institute religious and social peace. On the other hand, she intensified the military activity against the Slavs who continued to threaten the Greek areas. Athens had a diocese seat. In the 9 century, it became the seat of an archdiocese and later that of a metropolis.

A significant turning point for the Athenian history is the visit of Emperor Basilius II after the defeat of the Bulgarians.
He went up to the Parthenon, on the Acropolis, where he prayed to Virgin Mary the Athiniotissa (Athenian). With this visit, the emperor demonstrated his shift of interest towards mainland Greece which, at about that time, had started giving its own, distinct, contribution to medieval history. How was Athens in that time? How did the Athenians live? Information is offered by the Byzantine texts. First and foremost, the beauty of the Athenian landscape is stressed.

The vegetation of the Athenian plain, combined with the atmospheric impression created by the ancient ruins, accentuated the well being of the city. The Athenians were engaged in farming, textiles and commerce, which to a small extent, took place in the nearby natural harbors. At the end of the 12 century, a little before the fourth crusade, the situation seems to have changed again. The Bishop of Athens Michael Choniates gives through his texts a disappointing impression of the city. Athens was not what he had expected to find, especially at the spiritual level. The intellectual Bishop did not find the philosophers and the orators that he had imagined when talking of classical Athens. Instead he only found farmers and craftsmen. The bleak picture which he paints in his texts proves that at about 1200, the first waves of migration started: people were leaving Attica to find better living conditions elsewhere. But, this situation was utterly changed by the Frankish rule, which gave a new dimension and, perhaps, meaning to Athenian history.

Period of the Frankish Rule
After 1204, the Frank aristocrats gave their own stigma to the areas in which they had settled. The atmosphere of the time is described very well in the poem Erotokritos by Vitsentzos Kornaros. It is not accidental that Arethusa (the female character in Erotokritos) is the princess of Athens. It is here that the Frankish Rule left the deepest imprints.
As a matter of fact, the rule of the Westerners in Attica did not meet with any - with the exception of the incursion of the Catalans - great upheaval and shifts as those that characterized Northern Greece and the Peloponnese.
The relative stability, which prevailed, created a climate of prosperity in the city during the first phases of the Frankish rule. Athens started exporting farming goods and became again a textile center, This prosperity is due to the feeling of safety and stability, which is based on the feudal system of social stratification imposed on the Greeks in a placid manner. And, as time went by, the Athenians adopted some new ways of life, according to the examples that had been set by Westerners.

The French and later the Italians had full awareness of the importance of the territory on which they had imposed their rule. They attempted to project the natural beauty of the landscape as much as possible and many of them praised it.
According to the sources, Athens at the time of the Frankish rule had about a thousand "smokers" (houses).

If one estimates that in each house there lived between five and ten individuals, then the population of the city ranged between 5.000 and 10.000. The city, of significant size for that time had been formed around the area and is today known as Plaka. It appears that there was some kind of fortification, around the city. However, its main protection was still the Acropolis. In the last phase of the Frankish rule, there seems to be a resurgence of orthodox religious life and the common - for our country - practice of assimilating foreigners. Indeed, the last descendants of the Acciaiolli family, to the rule of whom the duchy of Athens had passed since 1388, were more Greek than Italian.

Period of the Ottoman Rule
In 1456, three years after the conquest of Constantinople, the Ottomans arrived in Athens. The last Acciaiolli ruler, even though he could resist the attack besieged in the Acropolis, preferred to surrender the castle and resort to exile. In 1458, Muhammed II the Conqueror arrived to Athens, permitting the city a privileged and quite peculiar administrative status. Allowing this status was due to many reasons. In the beginning of the 15 century, the upheaval, which had generally spread in the Greek area, had brought a decline to Athens. The inhabitants, therefore, adopted a positive attitude to the restitution of peace, even under the Ottoman rule. Even the clergy showed a preference to the new Ottoman rule than to the western rule. Consequently, there was no serious resistance movement. Muhammed respected this stance of the Christians. He also appreciated the value of the Acropolis as a fort, from which one could threaten the rear of any enemy attempting to cross from the Peloponnese towards Thebes or Chalkis, from south to central Greece. Therefore, it was of interest as a potential location for military concentration of forces and a point of strategic reserves. Thus Athens became a special administrative region, an area not subject to any pasha's jurisdiction.

The decision of the Sultan was significant because, due to the geographic extent to which the Ottoman rule was spread, the pashas had power of their own and the monarch could not, by definition, always be effective. As a result of Muhammed's favoritism, the Athenians gained immediate access to the Sultan's environment. This privileged status remained throughout the Ottoman rule.
The Turks had no reason to hassle the Athenians, as long as the latter stayed passive, which was the case.
The relative peace, which was imposed on Attica, brought about a limited economic prosperity. In the 17 century, a large part of commercial activity in Athens focused on the production of soap and olive oil trade. Its inhabitants had many commercial exchanges with the Venetians, which explains the warm reception that the Athenians gave in 1687 to the Venetians and Morozini. Apparently, they were expecting great rewards from the inclusion of Athens into the broader economic sphere on which Venice, still a considerable economic power, exercised control. The Venetian-Turkish conflict caused, finally, the destruction of the Parthenon.

The bomb, by coincidence, passed through some opening of the temple and fell on the gunpowder, which had been stored there. What was the city like and how did the Athenians live during the period of the Ottoman Rule? As it has already been mentioned, Athens was endowed with a privileged administrative status and the citizens started slowly to prosper. In the beginning of the 16 century, Athens was the fourth largest city, in terms of population, of the Ottoman Empire after Constantinople, Salonica and Adrianople. Its population amounted to about 18.000 residents. As time went by, the large and wealthy city started to decline. Morozini just drew the final shot. When the Athenians, who had found shelter outside the city, returned, they found their houses and churches ruined. Eventually, the reconstruction of the city began at a slow pace. According to the information provided by travelers of the time, the population of Athens in 1705 was about 2000 people, in 1721 about 5000-6000 and in 1730 it had risen to 10000. The great majority of the populace was Greek.

The Ottomans were about 25%.
The city comprised 1700-2000 houses, many of which were small, one floor with one or two rooms. The houses of the period of the Turkish rule, as these appear on the representations and in the descriptions of the travelers, had Greek, Frankish and Ottoman elements combined in harmony. They were houses full of sun, living areas extending into corridors and passages leading to gardens and courtyards full of color, fragrances and sounds, sounds of flowing water, of voices singing or chanting, vessels of life, as an Athenian architect named them.
It is most impressive that, according to the descriptions of the travelers and a number of illustrations, most mansions had private bathrooms (hamams). In well-known houses of the period, there were bathrooms on both levels or had a patio, yards, terraces, gardens, private church and a private hamam.
According to the depiction, on the side of the main house, one could find, built of different ground levels, an orchard with spices, a kiosk, the church (a small one-aisle basilica with a dome) and further down the kitchen, the oven, the laundry room, and to the side, the small private bathroom: a waiting area with a surrounding divan, where one could rest, an in-between small area, the main hamam converted by an octagon supporting a dome and three smaller tabs around it. Next to these was the water tank.

The existence of bathrooms showed the culture of the Athenians, the good standard of their everyday life. The open areas of the houses were constructed and organized in such a way as to offer comfort, health and enjoyment. They were directly connected to the semi-covered ones, that is, the promenades, the pergolas, the passageways and the conservatories (liakota), which were natural extensions of the covered areas. Which were these open areas? They were the patios, the mid-court or courtyard never lacking in Mediterranean houses, since the mild climate allows performing daily activities of family and social life in open areas. As it derives from the sources (texts and sketches of travelers, contracts of sale, contracts of dowry and reports of forced acquisition in the beginning of the 19 century), the traditional Athenian house had two different open areas: the courtyard and the garden. The courtyard was the first area where the residents received the visitor coming from the outside.

Modern Greek State
In 1834 Athens was designated the capital of the Greek State by Royal Decree. The Athenians started returning to their city in early 1830. They had fled upon its surrender to the Turks in 1827 and had settled in the islands of Aegina and Salamina. According to the description of Greek and foreign travelers, the siege of 1827 had turned the city into piles of ruins. The reconstruction of Athens started gradually, which, however, resulted in the destruction of the local architecture and its replacement with imported neoclassical architecture. Some old houses were repaired and some were built according to the same, early 19 century style, with some alterations. During this period, new residencies start being constructed following European standards, known to our days as neoclassical.

In this time many large public buildings are constructed by renowned European architects: Christian Hansen built the University and the Eye Hospital, Theofilos Hansen designed the Academy, the National Library and the Observatory, Gaertner built the Old Palace (Parliament). All of them worked together with Kleanthis and other Greek architects.
Chiller came later on and built Iliou Melathron (the House of Schliemann), the new Palace, the Melas Mansion (the old post office on Kotzia Square, near the City Hall) and other public and private buildings in Athens and the rest of Greece. In the 20 century, particularly in the second half, the aesthetic harmony of the city was lost and along with it the quality of life.
The reasons are many, among them the two massive population movements, the refugee wave of 1923, when Greeks fled Asia Minor and the internal immigration mainly after 1950. Athens intensive urbanization since the 1950's brought negative effects for the metropolitan region, i.e. uncontrolled urban development, transportation and environmental problems due to spatial planning inadequacies. A national institutional framework for urban planning and development and policy measures against environmental pollution, as well as the overall development strategy for Athens, implemented by its Municipal Authority upon the undertaking of its duties two years ago, succeeded in changing the image of the capital city.

The City of Athens has set new goals, aiming at increasing the quality of life for Athenian residents and visitors, with emphasis not just on the metropolis but also the periphery of Athens.
The legacy of the thousands of square meters of renovated pavements and roads, the modern equipment for cleaning, the new facades, the thousands of flowers and trees, ornaments of the squares and parks of the City, the active participation of Athenians in the City's cultural events should be further used to promote the city of Athens, as well as its high international profile. Preserving and using these works for the right purposes will be combined with new actions focusing on the creation of more green and recreational areas, on improving transportation in the City, encouraging investments on parking areas, recycling and promoting a more effective social policy.

In parallel there will be an increased interest in increasing the City's income from European projects. This will also enhance the city's orientation towards Europe and its promotion as a tourist destination.

Dr. Kalliopi (Kelly) A. Bourdara
Associate Professor, Faculty of Law University of Athens
Deputy Mayor of Athens
Former Minister - Member of the Parliament

Executive Secretary, Union of Central and Southeastern European Capitals