ancient cities

difference from both the Macedonian period and
the Roman Empire. Rome established a decentralized
administrative mechanism and a multicultural
army and respected local cultures. Emperor Hadrian
lived in Athens occasionally and constructed
Hadrian’s gate, the library by the Roman Forum in
the city center, and an admirable aqueduct, which
was revived in the nineteenth century and relieved
water shortages in Athens for a while. In classical
Athens, by contrast, the social exclusion of noncitizens
would soon backfire, as citizens became vulnerable
to attacks by noncitizens during the Peloponnesian
wars. After flowering for a mere century, Athens surrendered
to the Spartans by 404 BC, the Long Walls
to Piraeus were demolished, and democracy was
shattered by the regime of the 30 tyrants.
Neoclassical Athens
Athens followed Aegina and Nafplion as the capital
of Hellas after independence from Ottoman rule
(according to the 1830 London Protocol) and has
been one of the most successful experiments of creation
of an artificial capital on a global scale. In
1834 it was declared the capital of the new Greek
Kingdom, was rebuilt with modern urban design
and neoclassical architecture, and metamorphosed
from a deserted village of 12,000 inhabitants during
the last years of Ottoman rule, into a bustling city
of 242,000 inhabitants at the turn of the twentieth
century (1907). The creation of the new capital was
successful, despite negative forecasts and an interesting
debate about the rivalry between Athens—
then a village—and cosmopolitan Constantinople
as symbols of Hellenism.
Urban colonization of the Greek territory via
urban planning started in Athens through Bavarian
planning by royalty, their architects, and planning
teams. The physical process of building a capital
with neoclassical architecture was also an intellectual
itinerary in the fragments of history that would
constitute a coherent narrative, or perhaps rather
iconography, forging national identity by connecting
the present with antiquity and its material manifestation
in classical architecture. The core of the
city obtained its celebrated iconic neoclassical
“Athenian trilogy”—university, academy, library—
as well as other monumental buildings, generously
funded by the “great national donors.” These were
Athens, Greece
47
affluent diaspora Greeks located throughout places
of “unredeemed” Hellenism, who sponsored conspicuous
monuments and public buildings.
One main reason for legitimation of Bavarian
design on the level of the local societies was the
echo of classical Hellas. Neoclassical architecture
returned to the birthplace of classicism via European
cities and became crucial in the process of construction
of a new national Greek identity. Athens
was mostly built by Bavarians, but the buildings
were “naturalized” by the inhabitants and the
modern Greek nation, because of their familiar
classical forms. This has facilitated the reception of
European design trends imported especially by
Bavarians and, even more important, has undermined
colonial domination, despite the character
of nineteenth-century Athens as a colonial city.
A second reason for legitimation of Bavarian
planning was its departure from irregular Ottoman
or Mediterranean models. An interesting aspiration
was the recovery of Hellenism through the
“de-turkization” of Greek towns via regular plans
in the tradition of the “hippodamian” system, yet
another classical heritage. However, orthogonal
grids, straight streets, and regular town squares
were rarely realized. The Athens plan has been
revised more than 3,000 times, due to pressures
from local landowners. Citizens have objected to
the methods of implementation of the plans they
themselves had asked for and criticized planners
who constructed a virtual city, the unreal landscape
represented on blueprints, which has been
exciting and at times menacing—as, for example,
in the momentary risk of having the Acropolis
incorporated in the royal palace as a décor, in
accordance with Schinkel’s plan drawn by a man
who never visited Athens.
Neoclassicism, “de-turkization,” and cosmopolitanism
were all aspects of an underlying Greek
“dualism,” wherein modernity was underplayed
in urban cultural discourse, overshadowed by
debates over cosmopolitanism versus tradition or
nationalism, which also cut through language,
creating bilingualism. Alternating acceptance of,
and resistance to, Westernization has been the
main contradiction in the past—at present,
Europeanization has put all this to rest. Power
plays were stirred by the “protective powers,”
who intervened in several spheres, from political