Everything about Athens totally explained
Athens (;
Athina, ), the
capital and largest city of
Greece, dominates the
Attica periphery: as one of the world's oldest cities, its recorded history spans at least 3,000 years.
The Greek capital has a population of 745,514 (in 2001) within its administrative limits The
urban area of Athens extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3.37 million (in 2005). The area of Athens prefecture spans A bustling and cosmopolitan metropolis, Athens is central to economic, financial, industrial, political and cultural life in Greece. It is rapidly becoming a leading business centre in the European Union. In 2008, Athens was ranked the world's 32nd-richest city in a
UBS study.
Classical Athens was a powerful
city-state. A centre for the arts, learning and
philosophy, home of
Plato's
Academy and
Aristotle's
Lyceum, Athens was also the birthplace of
Socrates,
Pericles,
Sophocles and its many other prominent philosophers, writers and politicians of the ancient world. It is widely referred to as the
cradle of Western civilization and the birthplace of
democracy, largely due to the impact of its cultural and political achievements during the 5th and 4th centuries BC on the rest of the then known European continent.
The heritage of the classical era is still evident in the city, represented by a number of ancient monuments and works of art, the most famous of all being the
Parthenon on the
Acropolis, widely considered a key landmark of early Western civilization. The city also retains a vast variety of
Roman and
Byzantine monuments, as well as a small number of remaining Ottoman monuments projecting the city's long history across the centuries. Landmarks of the modern era are also present, dating back to 1830 (the establishment of the independent Greek state), and taking in the
Greek Parliament (19th century) and the Athens Trilogy (Library, University, and Academy). Athens was the host city of the
first modern-day Olympic Games in 1896, and 108 years later it welcomed home the
2004 Summer Olympics, with great success.
Origin of the name
In
Ancient Greek, the name of Athens was
Ἀθῆναι, related tο name of the goddess
Athena (
Attic Ἀθηνᾶ [atʰɛːnȃː] and
Ionic Ἀθήνη [atʰɛ́ːnɛː]). The city's name was in the plural, like those of Θῆβαι (
Thēbai), Μυκῆναι (
Mukēnai), and Δελφοί (
Delphoi).
In the 19th century, Ἀθῆναι (
Athinai / [aˈθinɛ]) was formally re-adopted as the city's name. Since the official abandonment of
Katharevousa Greek in the 1970s,
Αθήνα (
Athína / [aˈθina]) has become the city's official name.
History
Athens has been continuously inhabited for at least 3,000 years.
Classical Athens became the leading city of ancient Greece in the
5th century BC, with its cultural achievements laying the foundations of
Western civilization. During the Middle Ages, the city experienced decline and then recovery under the
Byzantine Empire, and was relatively prosperous during the
Crusades, benefiting from Italian trade; after a long period of decline under the rule of the
Ottoman Empire, Athens re-emerged in the 19th century as the capital of the independent Greek state, and in 1896 hosted the first modern
Olympic Games. In the 1920s a number of Greek refugees, expelled from
Asia Minor after the
Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922), swelled Athens' population; nevertheless it was most particularly following the
Second World War, and from the 1950s and 1960s, that the population of the city exploded, and Athens experienced a gradual expansion in all directions. In the 1980s it became evident that smog from factories and an ever increasing fleet of automobiles, as well as a lack of adequate free space due to overcongestion, had evolved into the city's most important challenges. A series of anti-pollution measures taken by the city's authorities in the 1990s, combined with a substantial improvement of the city's infrastructure (including the
Attiki Odos ring road, the dramatic expansion of the
Athens Metro, and the brand new
Athens International Airport), alleviated pollution considerably and transformed Athens into a much more functional city.
Geography
Athens sprawls across the central plain of
Attica, often referred to as the
Attica Basin which is bound by Mount
Aegaleo in the west, Mount
Parnitha in the north, Mount
Penteli in the northeast, Mount
Hymettus in the east, and the
Saronic Gulf in the southwest. The capital has expanded to cover the entire plain, making future growth difficult. The geomorphology of Athens causes the so-called
temperature inversion phenomenon, and along with the failure of the Greek Government to control industrial pollution is responsible for the air pollution problems the city has recently faced. The pollution of Athens was at one point so destructive, that according to the then Greek
Minister of Culture, Constantine Trypanis,
the carved details on the five caryatids of the Erechtheum have seriously degenerated, while the face of the horseman on the Parthenon's west side is all but obliterated. A series of strict measures then taken by the authorities of the city throughout the 1990s resulted in a dramatic improvement of air quality; the appearance of smog (or
nefos as the Athenians used to call it) has become an increasingly rare phenomenon.
Climate
Athens enjoys a typical
mediterranean climate, with the greatest amounts of
precipitation mainly occurring from mid-October to mid-April; any precipitation is sparse during summer and falls generally in the form of showers and/or
thunderstorms. Due to its location in a strong
rain shadow because of
Mount Parnitha, however, the Athenian climate is much drier compared to most of the rest of Mediterranean Europe. The mountainous northern suburbs, for their part, experience a somewhat differentiated climatic pattern, with generally lower
temperatures and more substantial
snowfalls during winter.
Fog is highly unusual in the city centre but it's more frequent to the east, behind the
Hymettus mountain range.
Snowfalls occur almost on a yearly basis, though these don't normally lead to significant, if any, disruption. Nonetheless, the city has experienced its share of heavy snowfalls, not least in the past decade. During the blizzards of March 1987; February 1992; January 4-6, 2002; February 12-13, 2004 and February 16-18, 2008, snow blanketed large parts of the metropolitan area, causing havoc across much of the city.
Spring and fall (autumn) are considered ideal seasons for sightseeing and all kinds of outdoor activities. Summers can be particularly hot and at times prone to
smog and pollution related conditions (however, much less so than in the past). The average daytime maximum temperature for the month of July is and heatwaves are relatively common, occurring generally during the months of July and/or August, when hot air masses sweep across Greece from the south or the southwest. On such days only temperature maxima soar over .
The all-time high temperatures for the metropolitan area of Athens of were recorded in
Elefsina, a suburb of Athens. The respective low-temperature record is, recorded at
Nea Filadelfia. During the February 2004 blizzard (one of the worst snowstorms ever to hit the city), temperatures plummeted to at the
University Campus, and at the meteorological station of the
National Observatory of Athens, in
Penteli.
Pollution and environment
Although air pollution remains to some degree an issue for Athens, particularly on the hottest summer days, widespread measures taken by the Greek authorities throughout the 1990s have effectively improved air quality.
In late June 2007, the
Attica region experienced a number of
brush fires, which is considered critical to maintaining a better air quality in Athens all year round. Piles of garbage filled the streets, causing pedestrians difficulty.
Reflecting this uncertainty about population figures, various sources refer to a population of around 5 million people for Athens. Also unaccounted for is an undefined number of unregistered immigrants originating mainly from
Albania and other
Eastern European countries.
The ancient site of the city is centred on the rocky hill of the acropolis. In ancient times the port of
Piraeus was a separate city, but it has now been absorbed into greater Athens. The rapid expansion of the city initiated in the 1950s and 1960s continues today, because of the transition from an agricultural to an industrial nation. The expansion is now particularly toward the East and North East (a tendency greatly related to the new
Eleftherios Venizelos International Airport and the
Attiki Odos, the freeway that cuts across
Attica). By this process Athens has engulfed many former suburbs and villages in Attica, and continues to do so. Throughout its long history, Athens has experienced many different population levels. The table below shows the historical population of Athens in recent times.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Athens'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://athens.totallyexplained.com">Athens Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
