the Travel Enthusiast
- 24 Mar
Adam in Amazing Places | NO COMMENTSThe Glorious Acropolis of Athens
The Acropolis shines brightly
The sacred mountain of Athena was once a cult center in ancient times.
The chaotic and intense traffic in the center of city seemingly do not bother its locals. The motorcycles and horns do not have any effect for the numerous clients of cafes. Even agitated entrepreneurs who strains through the numerous crowd seemingly are not bothered. The Athenians continue to smile with a humble and good-nature personality in their continuously growing city.
Little has remained from the old Athens, when it was proclaimed as capital of Greece in 1834. Only four thousand people lived in little houses at the northern mountainside of the Acropolis, when king Otto I barely arrived from Bavaria, son of Ludovic I, needed to unload and accommodate at a simple house with a floor, while his german architects in time made plans for modern Athens and its Royal palace.
As time went on people populated the city while it was in the process of construction. In 1921, after a bloody war, Greece and Turkey made a change of population and half of the Greeks who left “Little Asia” arrived in Athens. After that farmers have arrived who were looking for a job in the capital which eventually feigned constructions in the 1950’s. The city passed the limits. In the 1960’s the city has become one of Europe’s most interesting capitals, Athena with its 3.000.000 locals still faces growth.
The Acropolis seen from the Temple of Zeus ©George Rex/flickr
The Victory Over The Persians.
The abrupt hill which is 156 meters high above the city, attracted mankind even from the Neolithic age, seven hundred years ago, but the first powerful settlement was established around 1400 BC by the Mycenaean population. At the 6th century the city was confused with the Acropolis, but the locals started to develop the surroundings of the hill.
The Golden Age started after the victory over the Persians by the Greeks in the first Greco-Persian Wars( ended in 479 B.C), while the cultural spreading was registered under the rule of Pericles(461-429 B.C) when temples were constructed at the Acropolis.
The city remained an intellectual and philosophical center of the Mediterranean under Roman rule which started in 86 B.C, and even after the splitting of the empire in 395. Later, Athens has become a simple provincial city, especially when its famous schools of philosophy were closed in 529.
For the next centuries many nations arrived in Greece, being ruled by the Byzantines, French dukes, Catalan mercenaries, Florentine nobles to fall in the hands of Turkish sultans in 1456 three years after the fall of Constantinople. A short time after the Greek victory in the war of independence( 1821-1827), Athens has become the capital of a new state, short wile facing 14 revolutions, German occupation in World War II, the terrible civil all this before becoming the city filled with life nowadays, what attracts tourists from all around the world.
The Temple City
The Acropolis is by no doubt an aura of history that no one cannot deny. Despite all of this, it keeps only few remaining’s of the immense and extravagant temple of Pericles, with its bronze statues or marbles filled with expensive jewels. You can also admire at the metro station of Syntagma square the fragments of the old walls of the citadel, and archaeological treasures can be found also found.
Kotzia Square by night ©Stavros Markopoulos
The city also keeps Medieval age era buildings, like the little byzantine church from Metropolis square. It was established in the 12th century from the ruins of an old Pagan temple. The church also stay in the shadows of a cathedral, which was built in the 19th century, from the remaining’s of 70 old basilicas.
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travel search by Travelgrove (get this widget)Both churches are situated at the side of Plaka district, the old Turkish center of Athens stretched to the mountain base of the Acropolis and those are everything that remained from the early 19th century. Even if its filled with tourists, the city keeps its unforgettable atmosphere.
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