Athens, Greece

Athens (pop. 3,500,000) is home to over one third of the Greek population. The capital of Attica prefecture, Athens is Greece 's largest city and its administrative, economic, and cultural center. Greater Athens , which includes the port of Piraiévs and numerous suburbs, accounts for most of Greece 's industrial output. Manufactures include silk, wool, and cotton textiles, machine tools, steel, ships, food products, beverages, chemicals, pottery, printed materials, and carpets. Greater Athens is a transportation hub, served by rail lines, major roads, airlines, and oceangoing vessels. There is a large tourist industry. Water for the city is supplied by the Marathón reservoir (1931), formed by a dam made of Pentelic marble.

History

The cultural legacy of ancient Athens to the world is incalculable; to a great extent the references to the Greek heritage that abound in the culture of Western Europe are to Athenian civilization. Athens , named after its patron goddess Athena, was inhabited in the Bronze Age. According to tradition, Athens was governed until 1000 BCE by Ionian kings, who had gained suzerainty over all Attica . After the Ionian kings Athens was rigidly governed by its aristocrats through the archontate, until Solon began to enact liberal reforms in 594 BCE. Solon abolished serfdom, modified the harsh laws attributed to Draco (who had governed Athens c.621 BCE), and altered the economy and constitution to give power to all the propertied classes, thus establishing a limited democracy. During this period the city's economy boomed and its culture flourished, and the city remained a democracy during most of the years of its greatness.

The Persian Wars (500-449 BCE) made Athens the strongest Greek city-state. Much smaller and less powerful than Sparta at the start of the wars, Athens was more active and more effective in the fighting against Persia . The city arranged peace with Persia in 449 BCE and with its chief rival, Sparta , in 445 BCE, but warfare with smaller Greek cities continued. During the time of Pericles (443-429 BCE) Athens reached the height of its cultural and imperial achievement; Socrates and the dramatists Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides were active. The incomparable Parthenon was built, and sculpture and painting flourished. Athens became a center of intellectual life. However, the rivalry with Sparta had not ended, and in 431 BCE the Peloponnesian War between Sparta and Athens began. It finally ended in 404 BCE with Athens completely humbled, its population cut in half, and its fleet reduced to a dozen ships.

The growth of Macedon's power under Philip II heralded the demise of Athens as a major power. Despite the pleas by Demosthenes to the citizens of Athens to stand up against Macedon, Athens was decisively defeated by Philip at Chaeronea in 338 BCE. The city did not dare dispute the mastery of Philip's son and successor, Alexander the Great. Through the troubled times of the Peloponnesian War and the wars against Philip, Athenian achievements in philosophy, drama, and art had continued. Aristophanes wrote comedies, Plato taught at the Academy, Aristotle compiled an incredible store of information, and Thucydides wrote a great history of the Peloponnesian War. As the city's glory waned in the 3rd century BCE, its earlier contributions were spread over the world in Hellenistic culture.

Modern Athens was constructed only after 1834, when it became the capital of a newly independent Greece . The first modern Olympic games were held there in 1896. The population grew rapidly in the 1920s, when Greek refugees arrived from Turkey . The city's inhabitants suffered extreme hardships during the German occupation (1941-44) in World War II, but the city escaped damage in the war and in the country's civil troubles of 1944-50. The 1950s and 60s brought unbridled expansion. The development of a highway system facilitated the proliferation of automobiles, resulting in increased air pollution. This accelerated the deterioration of ancient buildings and monuments, requiring preservation and conservation programs as well as traffic bans in parts of the city. The Ellinikon airport was modernized and enlarged to accommodate increased tourism. A strong earthquake jolted the city in 1999.

Athens Points of Interest

The main landmark of Athens is the acropolis, which dominates the city and on which stand the remains of the Parthenon, the propylaea, and the Erechtheum. Occupying the southern part of Athens, the Acropolis is ringed by the other chief landmarks of the ancient city-the Pnyx, where the citizens' assemblies were held; the Areopagus; the Theseum of Hephaesteum, a well-preserved Doric temple of the 5th century BCE; the old Agora and the Roman forum; the temple of Zeus or Olympieum (begun under Pisistratus in the 6th century BCE and completed in the 2nd century CE. under Hadrian, whose arch stands nearby); the theatre of Dionysius (the oldest in Greece); and the Odeum of Herodes Atticus.