Athens (El)
From top to bottom and from left to right: Acropolis , the Hellenic Parliament Street Panepistimiou, Museum of the Acropolis , Monastiraki , night view of the city.
Administration
Country	Greece
Mayor	George Kaminis
Periphery	Attica
Nome	Nome Athens
Postcode	10x xx, 11x xx, 120 xx
Calling code	210, 211, 212
Registration	, ,
Geography
Contact	37 58 '00 "North 23 43 '00 "East / 37.9666667, 23.7166667
Altitude	170 m
Area	3800 ha = 38 km 2
Demography
Population	745 514 inhab. (2001)
Density	19 618.8 inhabitants / km 2
Location
Athens
Internet
City website	http://www.cityofathens.gr/

Athens (in ancient Greek Athena - the name is always plural - in modern Greek [a'ina] / singular) is the capital of Greece and its main city. The city is renowned for its glorious past during antiquity.

Geography

Athens as seen by SPOT Satellite

Website

Athens sprawls across the plain of Attica , dominated by Mount giale west, Mount Parnes in the north, Mount Lycabettus in the north-east (part of chain Pentelicus ), Mount Hymettus east, and the Saronic Gulf in the southwest. Because of these natural limits, it is unlikely to see the city spread much more than it is today. Moreover, the geomorphology of Athens contributes significantly to air pollution problems it suffers today ( Los Angeles to the United States experienced the same geomorphology and the same consequences).

The land is rocky and infertile. The ancient city was built at the foot of the Acropolis. In ancient and early twentieth ^century, the port of Piraeus (in Greek Piraeus) was a distinct city but now part of the city.

Urban Morphology

The neighborhoods of Plaka (located at the foot of the Acropolis), Kolonaki, Monastiraki and Exarhia (or Exarchia) are the center of the modern city. Lorsqu'Athnes became the capital of the kingdom of Greece in the ^nineteenth century , German architects have tried to create a new city-style neoclassical around Omonia Square (the Concorde in modern Greek) and Syntagma (Constitution). These places are the nerve centers, and most of the monuments and museums are located in these districts (the Parliament building occupies the royal palace on Syntagma) but for the rest of the neoclassical style not immediately view the surviving buildings being embedded in the surrounding buildings.

The new parts of the city are mostly gray concrete and suffer from a lack of green spaces. The Athenians have dubbed their town Tsimentoupolis (the "cement city").

Climate

The climate is Mediterranean , the summers are hot and dry, winters are mild. Continental influences are also present, because the mountains that border the city tour. When the wind blows from the north of the city in winter, it sometimes brings precipitation as snow. But Athens is generally dry (376 mm annual rainfall), summer drought actually lasts from April to October.

Etymology

The formation of the name would, according to some ^[1] , root Indo-European ath-probably meaning "head" or "summit", as the fortress of the Acropolis at the top of the hill of the same name, would constitute the " founding core "of the city. This also explains the origin of the mythological legend about the birth of Athena that the goddess, became patron of the city, would output "army" of the head of Zeus.

• The plural of Athens, according to Thucydides , is a trace of ancient villages that merged to found the city (see synoecism ).
• In ancient Greek , the city was called / Athena and under this name that it became the capital of the modern Greek state. However, since the abandonment of Katharevousa in the 1970's , the shape modern / Athna became the official name of the city (and megalopolis).

History

Antiquity

Traces of human occupation are attested from the Neolithic site of the Acropolis (see Pelasgians ). But it was only after the invasions Ionian that Attica was organized in cities , including Cecropia, the future Athens.

Athens was formally founded around 800 BC by the synoecism several villages, partially preserved by the invading Dorians. In doing so, taking advantage of the natural fortress of the Acropolis , they could withstand the hordes of looters who terrorized the region. The plural of Athens, according to Thucydides , is a trace of ancient villages that merged to form the city. According to legend, the hero Theseus , conqueror of the Minotaur , who led the unification of Attica.

Athens was one of the dominant cities in Greece during the ^first millennium BC. AD Its golden age was reached under Pericles in the ^fifth century BC. BC , where his domination was at once political, financial (due to the silver mines of Laurion and tribute), military and cultural. At this time Athens was known as the "capital ( [Asturias]) of Greece" ( Isocrates ). Soon, Athens turned the Delian League into an empire which was dissolved at the end of the Peloponnesian War , which pitted him against Sparta.

The philosopher Aristotle was born in 384 BC. AD participated much in the intellectual life of Athens thanks to his book where he criticized policy of Athenian democracy.

The Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC won. BC by Philip II ushered in the new Athens Macedonian Empire. The city, which remained the major center of Greek civilization enjoyed until ^the second century BC. AD of new development and improvement work carried out under the leadership of Lycurgus. After the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC. BC and the division of the Macedonian Empire, the city, still under the domination of the kings of Macedonia, sank into oblivion.

The Acropolis of Athens

Conquered by the Roman Sulla in 86 BC. BC, Athens lost its ramparts and its political role but was nevertheless a genuine intellectual beacon through the Pax Romana that took hold. Seduced by the culture and lifestyle Athenians, the Romans copied them into works of art and morals, and never ceased to beautify the city: the Tower of Winds , the temple of Rome and Augustus on the Acropolis The Roman Agora, the Odeon Theatre in Ancient Agora are among the monuments to that era. Around the year 1, and the city had about 300,000 inhabitants.

From 53, the preaching of St. Paul before the Areopagus gave only a faint echo in Christianity in Athens, he nevertheless managed to convert a venerable member of the court, Dionysius the Areopagite and Dionysius, Damaris, and a woman (text Original Acts chapter 17:33,34). Later, the emperor Hadrian ( 117 - 138 ), particularly attached to Greece, the continued planning work of his predecessors: the library that bears his name, Olympian (Temple of Zeus), a huge marble stadium located beyond the Ilissos, new roads and aqueducts were built during his reign.

Middle Age

Under the Byzantine Empire , Athens lost most of its fame only to become a small provincial town.

Theodosius II , by his edicts of 426 and 439, ordered the destruction of all pagan temples. He made an exception for Athens: they would be decommissioned and converted into churches. However, the Panathenaic continued to be celebrated. Justinian did implement the decisions of Theodosius II from 529: closing of the philosophical schools (mainly neo-Platonic), transformed into private Christian schools and conversion of temples into churches: the Parthenon became the cathedral of the city. Indeed, the cult of the Virgin (Greek Parthenos) Athena was replaced by the Virgin Mary Mother of God described as patroness of the Athenian city. The Erechtheion became Church of the Theotokos (Mother of God). In 857, the bishopric became Archbishop of Athens and the Parthenon became a metropolitan church. The temples were stripped of their treasures for the benefit of St. Sophia. Between the ^sixth and ^seventh century, was devoted to the Asklepieion moneyless Saints Cosmas and Damian. The Theseion was dedicated to St. George. In the twelfth ^century,Propylaea became episcopal palace. Many Byzantine churches were built, often on ancient pagan sanctuaries.

In 1146, the city was taken by Roger of Sicily. After the establishment of the Latin Empire of Constantinople in 1204 , the French put up a duchy of Athens , first ruled by the lords of the Rock and Brienne. It was conquered by adventurers Aragon , the Almugavares , before being taken by the Florentines , the Acciaiuoli (1385). The latter went to the city some of its luster. The Acropolis was transformed into a manor. They were lodged in the palace of the Metropolitan Propylaea. They built a watchtower was destroyed by Heinrich Schliemann in 1875. The lower city, limited to the Roman agora, was endowed in 1402 with a wall, sometimes called the Wall of Valerian.

The Turkish occupation

In 1458 the city fell under the occupation of the Ottoman Empire. The Turks surrounded the Acropolis new fortifications (the wall Serpentz), supported on the gantry of Eumenes and the Odeon of Herod Atticus. The Parthenon became a mosque. It was equipped with a minaret. The Erechtheion became the harem of disdar. 26 September 1687, when Athens was besieged by the troops of Venice commissioned by Morosini , a bomb fell on the Parthenon that the Turks had turned into a tinderbox. The temple was almost completely destroyed. The deterioration continued into the early ^nineteenth century was the work of the British ambassador in Constantinople , Thomas Bruce (Lord Elgin) and its agents.

The population of Athens declined sharply, something that was aggravated by the decline of the Empire itself. Entire neighborhoods of the city were destroyed between the seventeenth ^{and nineteenth-century} wars of factions.

^Nineteenth and ^twentieth centuries

From 1821 and the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, Athens was liberated from Turkish occupation when the troops captured the fortress of the Acropolis. In 1826 and 1827 , the Turks besieged the Acropolis , championed first by klepht Gouras and Makriyannis , and after the death of Gouras, by French General Fabvier. All attempts to reach the city, led by Karaiskakis then, after his death by Admiral Cochrane and General Church failed. Troops Rashid Pasha took the Acropolis May 27, 1827 and remained there until April 12, 1833. The city was virtually uninhabited when it was proclaimed capital of the Kingdom of Greece on ¹ December 1834 but was rebuilt in the decades that followed.
The government moved to a city in ruins. The churches were converted to accommodate the departments. The Theseion became a museum. The architects of the Bavarian King Otto proposed a blueprint triangle directed towards the Acropolis and development, and a perpendicular plane. Reconstruction / construction of the city was left to private initiative. Ermou Street (Hermes) that marked the border between old town, medieval and modern city.
A royal palace (now the seat of Parliament), which some architects have wanted to install on the Acropolis , was completed in 1838 on Syntagma Square. Queen Amalia created the following year a botanical garden (now the National Gardens) next to the palace.
In 1845 , the city was still either in ruins or a construction site. Large neo-classical houses emerged from wastelands barely cleared. The streets were not paved, nor wise, nor actually furnished.

During the First World War , the city was occupied by British and French troops.

After the Greco-Turkish war and the "Great Catastrophe" in September 1922 , the influx of over a million refugees coming from Asia Minor in the 1920s led to the construction of entire neighborhoods.

During the Second World War , the town was taken by Germany Nazi , April 27, 1941, and occupied until October 1944. The Germans organized a systematic starvation caused numerous deaths. 3 December 1944, the communist uprising began in the area around the Theseion, after police had fired on a demonstration that morning on Syntagma Square, making fifteen dead. The British restored order after intense street fighting and with reinforcements from Faliro.
The growth of Athens was very low during the first years after the destruction and devastation of the Greek civil war. Then the city began to grow.

The entry of Greece into the European Union in 1981 brought new investment to the city. Finally, the host of Summer Olympics of 2004 has driven many infrastructure projects.

In 1985 , Athens was declared the cultural capital of Europe.

Cultural influence

It was at Athens that the data include democracy and philosophy. In fact, the Athenian civilization is one of the foundations of European culture and is in memory of why the draft EU constitution preamble cites the historian Thucydides :

[...] ' .

"Our Constitution [...] is called a democracy because power is in the hands not of a minority but of many."

Athens was also the cultural center of classical Greece, and this in all areas. His conception of beauty and lasting good has influenced the rest of the Greek world, then Roman, and finally the West.

The Cariatides of the Erechtheion on the Acropolis.

• ceramic
• drama ( Aeschylus , Sophocles , Euripides , Aristophanes )
• rhetoric ( Attic orators )
• history ( Thucydides )
• philosophy ( Socrates , Sophists , Plato )
• architecture (construction of the Acropolis ).
• epigraphy (as a science, and has spawned many research center and school in this area)

Athens hosted the first Olympic Games in modern 1896 to commemorate the Olympic Games of ancient Greece. The city has welcomed the new Summer Games in 2004. Besides the sports and media success of the event, they may help increase foreign investment in Greece by proving the country's ability to manage large projects.

Places of interest

Monuments and museums

The Olympian Zeus

• the Parthenon on the Acropolis and its museum ;
• the Athenian Agora (hub of the ancient city) and its museum ;
• the Roman Agora and Tower of the Winds (a hydraulic clock built in the ^first century BC. )
• the Theseion;
• the theater of Dionysos ;
• the Panathenaic Stadium , rebuilt by Hadrian and Herodes Atticus and renovated in 1896;
  

  

  Odeon of Herod Atticus , in view of the Acropolis.

• the Athens National Archaeological Museum which houses one of the largest collections of art from ancient Greece;
• the Byzantine and Christian Museum in Athens created for collections of the Christian Archaeological Society;
• the National Gallery of Athens ;
• the Benaki Museum ;
• the Museum of Cycladic Art ;
• the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens ;
• the Olympian Zeus , or Temple of Olympian Zeus;
• the necropolis of ancient ceramics and its museum.

Institutions

• National Kapodistrian University of Athens
• Athens University of Economics
• French School of Athens : an institution renowned for its archaeological work.
• Port of Piraeus.
• School of epigraphy in Athens: major place in this area.

Miscellaneous

• the general market in Athens
• the flea market Monastiraki ;
• the streets of Kolonaki with its exclusive shops and museums of contemporary art;
• Mount Lycabettus , where one has a panoramic view of the city;
• the district of Plaka , the oldest section of Athens and one of the busiest;
• the Syntagma Square and the former royal palace that houses the Parliament.

Evzones on Syntagma Square.

Omonia Square

img alt = "" src = "% C3% http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b3/Ath A8nes_flamme_olympique_2004.JPG/90px-Ath% C3% A8nes_flamme_olympique_2004.JPG" width = "90 "height =" 120 "/> Olympic Torch 2004 and Parthenon

Famous natives

• Themistocles , strategist who won the victory at the Battle of Salamis.
• Solon , poet and legislator.
• Socrates , philosopher
• Plato , a disciple of the previous
• Pericles , strategist of the city of -451 to -429
• Dionysius the Areopagite ,
• Irene the Athenian , "emperor" of the Romans.
• Philothea Athens , patron saint of the city.
• Constantine Papachristopoulos said Costi is a sculptor Greek born November 27, 1906 in Athens and died March 3, 2004.
• Kitsikis, Dimitri, Grand Historian Greek (1935 -)

Universities

• National Kapodistrian University of Athens : Founded in 1837 , it is the oldest university in the country.
• National Technical University of Athens
• Agricultural University of Athens
• University of Harokopio
• Athens University of Economics
• Panteion
• School of Fine Arts in Athens
• University of Piraeus
• American College of Greece
• French School of Athens

Conservatories

• Athens Conservatory : founded in 1871.
• Hellenic Conservatory of Athens : founded in 1919 by Manolis Kalomiris.
• National Conservatory of Athens : founded in 1926 by Manolis Kalomiris.

Population

The Athens area is home to the largest population of Greece , with 3.7 million inhabitants on a surface area of 428 km ^2, a total of 11.125 million Greeks around (on January ^1, 2006 ), nearly a third of the population.

Map of Athens (1888)

Population change through the ages:

• Antiquity : 300 000/400 000
• 1853 : 30 600
• 1879 : 65 500
• 1896 : 123 000
• 1925 : 443 000
• 2001 : 3,761,810

The modern city of Athens consists of previously separate towns and villages, that the expanding population of the ^twentieth century ended up forming an agglomeration. It now includes 54 municipalities (), the largest being the city of Athens ( / Dhmos Athinon), with nearly one million inhabitants (the second being Piraeus ). The name of Athens can designate the entire city (also called the Greater Athens) and the city of Athens, or even just downtown. See below the list of municipalities.

Transportation

The train TA10012 tram of Athens, on line 5

Athens has a dense network of trolleybuses and buses. To fight against pollution, a growing share of buses running on natural gas for vehicles ( NGV).

The subway , the first line, called SIAP, date 1904 , was completed in 2000 by two modern lines and extends to the airport. Three lines of tramway (3, 4 and 5), running 24/24, have been commissioned for the 2004 Olympic Games: two of them connecting the center of Athens (starting near Syntagma). Line 3 provides service between Voula (south-east of the city) and Piraeus (end SEF) while line 4 connects Piraeus to Syntagma Square. As for line 5, it connects Syntagma Square to Voula.

A fast train network Proastiakos also connects the central station (Larisa) penthouse in the suburbs to the airport - it takes the same route as the metro between Doukissis Plakentias and the Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport. The latter, built by a German company, was replaced in 2001 the former Elliniko (Hellinikon International Airport, IATA code : ATH ).

At these public transport, taxis must be added, ubiquitous in the Hellenic Capital, which are unique to both several passengers going vaguely in the same direction.

Before these developments, moving to Athens proved very problematic, either because of outdated equipment or slow traffic. A contribution of the 2004 Olympics is that network-efficient subway tram-bus which seems to have brought a solution to the problem of transporting Athenian. Nevertheless, the streetcar has no precedence over other traffic, causing some delays and hampers the performance.

Administration

Nome Athens

The Nome Athens is one of the 54 prefectures of Greece. It is part of the periphery of Attica. Its capital is Athens. The prefecture has an area very small but densely populated part covers the central Athens area. It is divided into several municipalities and communities (listed in the detailed article).

Districts of the municipality of Athens

The 7 districts of the municipality of Athens

The municipality of Athens is divided into 7 districts or "Dimotika Diamerismata" (numbered 1 to 7). This division in the district is mainly used for administrative purposes.

Twinning

Athens is detached or has partnerships with the following cities:

References

See also

Related Articles

• Athenian democracy ;
• Greece ;
• The agora of Athens ;
• National Gallery of Athens ;
• Athens Olympic Complex ;
• Summer Olympics of 1896 ;
• Summer Olympics of 2004.

External Links

• (In) Reports of The Origins of Athens, c. 430 BCE - 110 CE.
• Accessibility Wiki

Media and access to information

• Athens folder on the site of TV5.

Official Links

• (In) official tourism site of Athens ;
• (El) (en) Site of the city of Athens ;

Tourism

• Athens Wikitravel.

Preceded by	European Capital of Culture 1985	Followed by
-	Athens	Florence

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