Athens, Greece

Athens is the capital of Greece and is the country's largest city. It is the center of Greek publishing, trade, education, and finance. In 2004, Athens hosted the Olympic Games, and the new sports centers, transportation system, and other improvements have reinvigorated the city. It is a popular tourist destination because of its famous archaeological sites, museums and vibrant night life. Athens is known worldwide for its history, art, and architecture.

Landscape

Athens is located on the Attic Peninsula, in a plain surrounded by mountains and the sea to the west. The city itself, which occupies about 38 square kilometers (14.7 square miles), is about 8 kilometers (5 miles) from the ocean. The greater metropolitan area covers 427 square kilometers (165 square miles) and stretches from the seaside to the slopes of the surrounding mountains. Within the city there are a number of prominent hills, the most striking being Lykabettos (227 meters/745 feet) and the Acropolis (156 meters/512 feet).

Athens has a Mediterranean climate. Summers are hot and dry, with an average daytime temperature of about 33 degrees Celsius (91 degrees Fahrenheit), and winters are cool, with temperatures around 13 degrees Celsius (55 degrees Fahrenheit). The temperature rarely falls below freezing, and snow is rare. Most of the rainfall occurs between October and May. This mild climate allows for year-round outdoor activity. Many restaurants and cafés have outdoor seating. There are parks in the city itself and beaches on the coast.

Pollution is sometimes a serious problem in Athens, though in the years leading up to the 2004 Olympics, Athens made great strides in reducing this problem. The city is prone to temperature inversion, in which a mass of warmer air becomes stationary over a layer of cooler air. This prevents the normal flow of air and traps pollution near ground level.

Climate change is creating problems in Athens and throughout Greece. Extreme heat will become three times more frequent in Athens under the current emissions trajectories. The temperature in Greece has been increasing since the 1960s and is projected to continue to do so far into the twenty-first century. Over the past two decades, the average annual rate of warming was 0.0047 C, which is much higher than the world's annual average of 0.011 C. High temperatures are expected to create electricity supply problems because extreme heat can cause power failures.

People

The population of the greater metropolitan area of Athens was around 3.154 million in 2022, approximately 30 percent of the overall population of Greece of approximately 10.5 million people.

Most Athenians are of Greek descent, though there is also a growing immigrant community in the city. In the early 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, many Albanians moved into Greece looking for work. Albanians are still the largest immigrant group in Athens, though there are also Georgians, Indians, Pakistanis, and others. Immigration has caused some tensions, but like many European countries, Greece has a declining birthrate and an aging native-born population, which makes the immigrant community a valuable asset.

Virtually all Athenians of Greek descent belong to the Greek Orthodox Church. Other Christian denominations are represented in small numbers, and there is a small Jewish community. Islam is the largest non-Christian religion in Athens, with about 200,000 Muslims in the greater metropolitan area. Many of these Muslims are immigrants from neighboring Albania and elsewhere.

There are several notable neighborhoods in Athens. On the north side of the Acropolis lies the Plaka, one of the few neighborhoods that survives from the early nineteenth century and one of the city's most picturesque areas. Many of the streets are narrow and irregular, conforming to the slope of the Acropolis hill, and many of the houses are small whitewashed stone buildings. The main streets of the Plaka are filled with cafés and shops. Northwest of the Plaka is Psiri, which is known for its vibrant nightlife. To the northeast of the Plaka is Syntagma (Constitution) Square, the center of the modern city. Opposite Syntagma lies the parliament building, formerly the royal palace.

The pleasant climate lends itself to outdoor life, and consequently outdoor tavernas (cafés that specialize in traditional Greek foods) are ubiquitous in Athens. Traditional foods include tzatziki (a garlicky yogurt-cucumber dip), dolmades (stuffed grape leaves), and souvlakia (meat, usually lamb, grilled on a skewer). Distinctive Greek alcoholic beverages include ouzo (an anise-flavored liquor) and retsina (a white wine flavored with pine resin).

Economy

Athens is the center of Greek industry and business. Half of the country's industrial and manufacturing jobs are located in the greater metropolitan area. Athenian businesses make a variety of products, from pottery and carpets to books, alcohol, soap, and chemicals. Businesses that cater to tourism are also among the chief sources of income. The port city of Piraeus in the greater metropolitan area is the busiest port in Greece, and offers ferry service to the Greek islands and other destinations.

During the second half of the twentieth century, economic progress in Athens was uneven. The city suffered terribly during World War II and for several years following the war, when Greece was embroiled in a civil war. The economy rebounded in the 1950s and early 1960s, until political turmoil caused a depression. Athens did not fully recover from this economic depression until the 1990s.

The Olympic Games in 2004 were a great success and the city made a number of improvements to its infrastructure in the years preceding the event. A new international airport was built and the metro system was improved and greatly expanded. The city also built state-of-the-art sports facilities that are now used by local teams and for international sports competitions as well as for concerts and other events. However, the global economic recession that began in 2008 was manifested particularly acutely in Greece, which suffered the European Union's worst sovereign debt crisis, threatening to culminate in the country's departure from the eurozone. A series of EU bailouts and fiscal austerity measures began in 2010, however, averting the worst-case scenario but leaving the Greek economy in a precarious state.

Between 2010 and 2018, Greece's economy grew slowly, but the country had a relatively high unemployment rate. After the EU bailouts, average incomes dropped significantly, pensions and other benefits were cut, and taxes were raised. In 2018, the EU bailouts ended and Greece rejoined the international economy.

Greece's economy significantly improved in the 2020s, largely because of increased tourism and the construction of hotels. Companies such as Microsoft and Pfizer are investing in the country. Greece is making progress in paying down its large debt. However, its debt is still significant and inflation has increased because of Russia's war with Ukraine.

Landmarks

Athens has many historical and cultural sites. On the Acropolis are the Temple of Athena Parthenos (the Parthenon) and other ancient temples. The south slope of the Acropolis is home to the ancient Theater of Dionysus and the Theater of Herodes Atticus, built in the second century CE. Plays, operas, and concerts are still performed at the Theater of Herodes Atticus. On the north slope of the Acropolis is the Agora, the ancient market place, where there is a rebuilt stoa (market building) and the remains of other buildings. Nearby is the Pnyx, where the Athenian Assembly gathered to vote on the city's business.

Other ancient monuments include the remains of the Temple of the Olympian Zeus, and the ancient Stadium, built around 330 BCE for the celebration of the ancient Panathenaic (all-Athenian) Games. The Stadium was restored with new marble in the late nineteenth century for the first modern Olympic Games in 1896.

There are also many modern sites in Athens. There are a number of beautiful cathedrals, including the tiny twelfth-century Ayios Eleftherios, one of only a few remaining Byzantine cathedrals in the city. It is located between Syntagma Square and the Acropolis. Ayios Eleftherios stands next to the Mitropolis, the main cathedral in the city, which was built in the mid-nineteenth century in neo-Byzantine style.

Athens has many museums. The National Archaeological Museum houses a magnificent collection of ancient Greek art. There are also museums on the Acropolis and in the Agora, which house works of art that were found at those sites. The Benaki Museum, which began as a private collection, has an eclectic mix of ancient and modern art as well as some Islamic, Chinese, and Coptic art. There are also a number of museums dedicated to later Greek periods, including the Byzantine Museum, National Historical Museum, the Jewish Museum of Greece, and the National Gallery and Soutzos Museum.

History

People have been living in the Athens region at least since the Neolithic Age. The Acropolis was fortified as a stronghold during the Late Bronze Age (c. 1200 BCE). Parts of the massive fortification walls from this period can still be seen.

Athens was at its height during the Classical Period (800–323 BCE), particularly in the fifth century. Athens was then an independent city-state. In a series of political reforms in the sixth and fifth centuries, Athens limited the power of the aristocracy and turned control of the city over to ordinary citizens. They called this form of government demokratia, or “democracy” (the rule of the people).

The fifth century BCE in Athens was a kind of renaissance. The Parthenon and many other buildings were built during this period. Philosophers, scholars, and scientists flocked to the city, and the native Athenian philosophers Socrates and Plato were active. The city's most famous playwrights (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes) were producing their plays in the Theater of Dionysus at the foot of the Acropolis. But the fifth century was dominated by the Peloponnesian War, a devastating war against Sparta that stretched from 431 to 404 BCE. Ultimately, Athens lost the war, and never recovered its strength.

In later centuries, though Athens lost its political and military importance and was eventually conquered by Rome, the city never lost its reputation as a center of education and culture. The philosophical schools founded in the fourth century by Plato and Aristotle flourished for centuries. It was only after these schools were closed in 529 CE that the city lost its importance.

From about 1200 to 1450 Athens was controlled by a series of foreign rulers. Then in 1456 Greece was invaded by the Turks, and for nearly 400 years Greece was a part of the Ottoman Empire.

The Greek War of Independence (1821–27) freed Greece from Turkish rule. In 1834 Athens was named the capital of the newly independent country. European countries that had supported the Greek cause installed a new king, Otto, who was the son of the king of Bavaria. Otto arranged for architects and city planners to remake Athens, which at the time was little more than a village of 4,000 people, into a modern capital.

The twentieth century brought a series of dramatic changes to Athens. In 1923, as part of a treaty with Turkey, over a million Greeks living in Turkey returned to Greece. Many of these refugees settled in Athens, nearly doubling the city's population. During World War II, Greece was invaded by Germany. Thousands of Athenians died of starvation during the occupation, and virtually all of the Jewish population was deported and perished in Auschwitz. After World War II and the Greek Civil War of the late 1940s, Athens saw a period of rapid expansion, which was followed by political and economic instability in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The revitalization of Athens culminated with the city's hosting of the 2004 Summer Games of the Olympics, which were hailed as a great success. In 2009, the city opened the New Acropolis Museum close to the Parthenon.

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