oyaging to Athens
is akin to voyaging through time as well as geography.
Home to one of the very first human settlements to be
worthy of being dubbed a civilisation, it’s a city where the past,
arguably, overshadows the present and the future. Indeed, it
takes but a scant stretch of the imagination to see Athens as not one
but two cities, with its past glories ever superimposed on its current,
more lacklustre, incarnation. While, today, it’s the slightly down-
at-heel graffiti-ridden capital of a country still drowning
in international debt, beneath it all, a second, older,
nobler city can still be perceived, one with a
lineage that stretches back millennia and one
that was once as lofty and insurmountable as
Athena, its namesake goddess, the daughter of
Zeus and the very personification of wisdom.
As anyone who has leafed through even the
most elementary of history primers will testify,
Athens is one of the world’s oldest cities, widely
acknowledged as the cradle of civilisation and the
birthplace of democracy. While its tale is tangled enough to
take a thousand books to tell, every year countless academics dedicate
themselves to casting a little light on its lesser-known lores, intently
distinguishing between myth and mundane reality.
But beyond its academic admirers, what of 21st-century Athens? And,
how indeed, should we judge the modern-day manifestation of this once-
magnificent metropolis? Well, judging it kindly, let’s accord it, in human
terms, the status of a mild-mannered septuagenarian, one ever-minded to
revisit past glories as a distraction from their less-edifying twilight years.
One such arch reminder of the city’s past glories still towers over
the contemporary capital – the Acropolis, an ancient citadel that has
been at the heart of Athens for more than 2,500 years. Even though
time has not been kind to the site – and several attempts at restoration
could be described as ‘misguided’ at best – contemporary visitors can
still discern its former scale and magnificence from its skeletal remains.
By its once-grand entranceway is the twin-tower-flanked Beulé
Gate, which opens onto the Temple of Athena Nike and the Parthenon,
with the latter being seen as one of the world’s greatest cultural
monuments. The building we see today is largely the product of
several controversial reconstruction initiatives, with the majority of
its extant sculptures and murals having been relocated to the nearby
Acropolis Museum for safekeeping. Despite this, its vast scale and epic
proportions retain the ability to impress.132 igafencu.com
By contrast, the Temple of Athena Nike
has been spared the worst ravages of time,
the tourist hordes and the looters of ancient
times, with the distinctly feminine carvings
on the temple’s pillars retaining many of
their more intricate details. Neither could
the passing centuries deprive the citadel of
one of its most breathtaking assets – the
sweeping views it commands out over the
wider city, with clear skies (never a given
in this most congested of European cities)
offering a glimpse of the distant sea.
The almost inevitable next stopping-
off point for the majority of visitors is the
nearby Acropolis Museum, conveniently
set at the foot of the venerable citadel.