Linda Gasparello: ‘Smart City’ on the Athens Riviera
Mural across the street from the Wyndham Grand in Athens. The mural’s title is “So many books, so little time.’’
In the Hellenistic age, which began with the death of Alexander the Great, in 323 B.C. and ended with Rome’s conquest of Egypt, in 30 B.C., Greek architects went colossal. The ruined Temple of Olympian Zeus, which stands in the center of Athens, exemplifies the temples, theaters and stadia that were the main features of the towns and cities of the age.
Today, just a half hour’s drive southeast of Athens, on the Athens Riviera, a mega-city is under construction, harkening back to the Hellenistic age cities.
The $8.2 billion Ellinikon project is underway on the site of Hellinikon International Airport, which closed in 2001. The site also housed facilities for the 2004 summer Olympics.
The Ellinikon is supposed to be a “smart city,” with high-end shopping, restaurants, housing, an athletic club, hotels and a sprawling public park.
Now open: the Experience Center, in the largest of the three airport hangars, and Park, where visitors can get an idea of what will be built via a series of virtual exhibitions.
One of the interactive models at the center’s ‘‘Living a New Era’’ exhibition uses more than 25,000 individual pieces to highlight the Ellinikon’s green spaces, next-generation designs and infrastructure projects. Visitors can also cruise the coastline aboard a simulated speedboat at the ‘‘Living by the Sea’’ exhibition or check out the Botanical Library. You can even take a virtual stroll through the ‘‘Night Garden Dome,’’ which emulates the park at night with a series of light strips, sounds and scents, according to the Robb Report, the luxury lifestyle magazine.
The Ellinikon will open in phases. The first phase, including Marina Tower — Greece’s first residential high-rise, designed by Britain’s Foster + Partners — and a retail and dining galleria, is expected to open in 2025. This will be followed by the launch of a sporting complex, marina and next-generation transportation system.
A number of international architectural firms are involved with the Ellinikon. From what I have seen of Foster + Partners’ work in the capital cities of Astana, Kazakhstan and Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, they will do the Hellenistic age proud.
Down to the Sea in Ships
Cape Sounion, on the southernmost tip of the Attica peninsula, was an emotionally important place for the ancient Athenians.
According to the myth, Aegeus, king of Athens, threw himself from a cliff into the sea because of a misunderstanding: Aegeus had told his son, Theseus, that upon returning to Athens, he was to fly a white sail if he had triumphed over the Minotaur, and to instruct the crew to raise a black sail if he had been killed. Theseus, forgetting his father’s direction, flew a black sail as he returned. The grieving king fatally jumped from a cliff into the sea, giving the sea its name, Aegean, and his son the kingdom.
The Temple of Poseidon
The ancient Athenians decided to build a temple there, dedicated to Poseidon, the god of the sea, to ensure fair winds and following seas for their seafarers and warriors. The temple was rebuilt three times, the last by Pericles, the Athenian statesman, probably around 440 B.C., but only some of the Doric columns stand today.
During a visit in 1810, poet, Grecophile and graffitist Lord Byron engraved “Byron” on one of the columns.
At a Temple of Poseidon overlook, I watched a sailboat in irons — the sails were luffing, it was drifting. The captain and crew were struggling to resume forward motion.
The scene was poignant — a reminder that the ancient Greeks feared ships and the sea. But most of all, they feared disappearing without a trace at sea. Death by drowning meant you gained no fame — no one to tell the tale of how you died — and no closure for yourself and your loved ones.
Telemachus, the son of Odysseus, the wandering hero of Homer’s epic poem, yearned to stop grieving and get on with his life.
In the Robert Fagles translation of The Odyssey, Telemachus — now a 20-year-old, but just a babe when his father set sail for Troy — says bitterly, “I would never have grieved so much about his death if he had gone down with comrades off Troy or died in the arms of loved ones, once he had wound down the long coil of war.
“Then all united Achaea would have raised his tomb and he would have won his son great fame for years to come.
“But now the whirlwinds have ripped him away, no fame for him! He is lost and gone now — out of sight, out of mind — and he has left me tears and grief.”
On June 14, a fishing vessel carrying hundreds of refugees, the Adriana, sank off the Greek port city of Pylos. About 600 people, including children, drowned. Investigations by numerous organizations are close to concluding that the Adriana was towed by the Greek coast guard towards Italian waters and then, when this was unsuccessful, capsized.
Hundreds from Africa and the Middle East — mostly from Pakistan — are lost and gone, and their loved ones have been left with tears,
From Dereliction to Destination
The Metaxourgeio neighborhood around the Wyndham Grand in Athens, where my husband and I and a friend stayed for a week, is tumbledown.
It is one of the oldest neighborhoods in Athens. The upper class lived there until the opening of the Athanasios Douroutis silk factory, which gave the neighborhood its name (metaxourgeio means “silk mill”) and brought in the working class.
When the silk factory closed down in 1875 (it now houses the Municipal Art Gallery), the neighborhood started its long slide into dereliction.
Some tourism Web sites describe it gently as a “transition neighborhood” in the city center, which is gaining a reputation as an artistic neighborhood, due to the opening of art galleries, theaters and cafes. Others say is known for its large number of cheap brothels, drug addicts, transsexuals and Middle Eastern immigrants.
One cab driver fumed about the ticky-tacky tourist shops on a street near the Wyndham Grand.
“They are owned by the migrant criminals from Pakistan. Their gangs rob people on the streets and in the metro,” he said, referring to the Metaxourgeio Metro Station.
Such anti-migrant sentiment has been growing in Greece, and lead to the biggest surprise in the country’s parliamentary elections on June 25: The little-known, far-right Spartans party, which campaigned strongly on the idea that Greece was threatened by uncontrolled migration, won 4.7 percent of the vote, becoming the fifth biggest group in the 300-seat parliament, according to newspaper reports.
I must report that I had an encounter with a criminal in Athens: A Greek cabbie whose preposterous fare from the National Archaeological Museum to the Wyndham Grand gave new meaning to the Golden Fleece.
Metaxourgeio Murals
Athens has some of the finest street art in the world — and it has brightened up the blighted Metaxourgeio.
On the side of a building across the street from the Wyndham Grand, there is a mural of a young woman sitting on a window seat, reading a book and revealing a knee. There are books piled up behind her. The title of the mural, painted by SimpleG, is “So many books, so little time.”
Across the circle in front of the hotel, there is a mural, painted by Leonidas Giannakopoulos, that will stop you in your tracks. It depicts a fish disgorging a woman, upon whose wavy hair a twin-masted ship is sailing.
As noted on a bottom corner, the mural was painted during the Petit Paris d’Athene, 2021 — the eighth year of a 10-day art and culture festival in underserved areas of the city, co-organized by the Athenian Art Network and the Cultural, Arts and Youth Organization of the Municipality of Athens, and supported by the French press and the French Institute in Greece.
Alexander the Great
There are great restaurants all over Athens. And there is the Alexander the Great: a restaurant where performance art meets culinary art.
While the owner, Alexander, greets and gabs with the customers, applause-worthy traditional food — taramosalata, grilled fish, moussaka, pork souvlaki and lamb chops — comes out of the kitchen. Dinner theater — and so reasonably priced.
On the day we arrived in Athens, we ate there for convenience — the restaurant is across the street from the Wyndham Grand and has tented, sidewalk seating on the same side of the street as the hotel. But we kept returning for what was some of the best food — and often just for Alexander’s great coffee — and fun on our trip. Bravo, Alexander!
Linda Gasparello is co-host and producer of White House Chronicle, on PBS. She is based in Rhode Island and Washington, D.C.