Voyaging to Athens is akin to voyaging through time and geography. Home to one of the very first human settlements worthy of being dubbed a civilisation, it’s a city where the past overshadows its present and future. Indeed, it takes only a scant stretch of imagination to see Athens as not one but two cities, with its past glories superimposed on its current, more lacklustre, incarnation. While, today, it’s the slightly down-at-heel graffiti-ridden capital of a country still drowning in international debt, beneath it, a second, older, nobler city can be perceived, one with a lineage that stretches back millennia and one that was once as lofty as its guardian goddess Athena.
As anyone who has leafed through even the most elementary of history primers will testify, Athens is one of the world’s oldest cities, widely acknowledged as the cradle of civilisation and the birthplace of democracy. While its tale is tangled enough to take a thousand books to tell, every year countless academics dedicate themselves to casting a little light on of its lesser-known lore, intently distinguishing between myth and reality.
Beyond its academic admirers, what of 21st-century Athens? And, how indeed, should we judge the modern-day manifestation of this once magnificent metropolis? Well, let’s accord it, in human terms, the status of a mild-mannered septuagenarian, one ever-minded to revisit past glories as a distraction from their twilight years.
One such arch reminder of the city’s past glories still towers over the contemporary capital – the Acropolis, an ancient citadel that has stood tall for more than 2,500 years. Even though time has not been kind to the site, contemporary visitors can still discern its former scale and magnificence from its skeletal remains.
By its once grand entranceway is the twin-tower flanked Beulé Gate, which opens onto the Temple of Athena Nike and the Parthenon, a second temple, and one seen as one of the world’s greatest cultural monuments. The building we see today is largely the product of several controversial reconstruction initiatives, with the majority of its extant sculptures and murals having been relocated to the nearby Acropolis Museum for safekeeping. Despite this, its vast scale and epic proportions retain the ability to impress.
By contrast, the Temple of Athena Nike has been spared the worst ravages of time, the tourist hordes and the looters of ancient times, with the distinctly feminine carvings on the temple’s pillars retaining many of their more intricate details. Neither could the passing centuries deprive the citadel of one of its most breathtaking assets – the sweeping views its commands out over the wider city, with clear skies even offering a glimpse of the distant sea.
The almost inevitable next stopping-off point for the majority of visitors is the nearby Acropolis Museum, conveniently set at the foot of the venerable citadel. Completed in 2007 and extending across a four-storey 14,000sq.m space, it’s an unparalleled repository of Greek antiquities stretching back to times Neolithic. While it houses an impressive array of classic ceramics, restored statuettes and even partially-complete Parthenon murals, one of its memorable featured is its glass-floored lower level through which visitors can peer down into the depths of the subterranean excavation site, where Byzantine residences and public buildings can be seen in situ.
While many of ancient Greece’s treasures have been lost or despoiled, its classic cuisine has survived the centuries in vibrant form and nowhere is this more evident than in Plaka, one of Athen’s most venerable districts, which is now one of the city’s most beguiling shopping, dining and wining enclaves. With its narrow cobblestone streets alive with tiny shops offering everything from jewellery to olives and ceramics and its pavements bristling with alfresco cafes and family-run tavernas, it’s both charming and labyrinthine.
Of course, no trip to Athens is complete without travelling to Delphi, some 185km away. It’s a site that was designated as the epicentre of the earth by Zeus, the all-father in the Classic pantheon of gods. It was later dedicated to the worship of Apollo, the son of Zeus and the god of prophecy, with thousands of Greek nobles of classic times undertaking the oft-perilous journey to learn their fates from his anointed Oracle.
Nowadays, of course, the journey is far less perilous and far more air-conditioned, with regular coach trips allowing you to take in the lush countryside en route. Once reaching Delphi, the main attractions are, of course, the mostly-in-ruins Temple of Apollo, the better-preserved Theatre of Delphi, which is home to one of the most astonishing examples of ancient acoustic know-how.
The more nimble traveller may even brave the narrow, gravelly path that leads up to the highest point of the sanctuary, where they will be rewarded with a view of the Stadium of Delphi, one of the best-preserved ancient tournament sites in the world. From there, it is but a short hop to the Delphi Archaeological Museum, a showcase of many of the most inspiring local archaeological discoveries, notably the fourth-century BC Sphinx of Naxos and the fifth-century BC Charioteer of Delphi.
While it’s easy to be completely blindsided by the mythical resonances of the sites and structures of the Delphic region, its well worth drinking in the sheer natural beauty of the landscape as well. It doesn’t take more than a brief commune to understand why these verdant hills and lush valleys fired the imagination of the ancients, allowing their souls to soar and gifting them with the kind of divine sensibility that first kindled the flickering flame of civilisation, a flame that countless intervening centuries have yet to truly dim.
Text: Suchetana Mukhopadhyay