This book explores the development of the city of Athens after the Greek War of Independence. It presents the process of creation of a neo-classical capital, in the place of a pre-existing town with the remains of a long history. The book examines the treatment of the pre-revolutionary town, its connection with the neo-classical city, the position of old churches in this antiquity-centered capital, and the factors that influenced the implementation of the projects for the new capital and their consequences on the city’s evolution. It will be of interest to historians, geographers, architects and scholars of Europe.

The Creation of Modern Athens: Planning the Myth is the first book to examine the urban development of Athens in the nineteenth century. Analyzing the process of architectural and urban design, Eleni Bastea reveals the multiple and often conflicting interpretations of the new city. By following two parallel processes--the building of the new capital and the construction of a new national Greek identity--Bastea demonstrates that Athens' elaborate urban design and civic architecture reflected both international neoclassical ideals as well as the national aspirations of the modern Greek nation.

Athens is a well-known destination for those interested in discovering the birthplace of Western civilization. Its ancient monuments have been the model for innumerable buildings and works of art all over the Western world. However, the reality of modern Athens is much more complicated: the ancient monuments and neo-classical buildings are interlaced with winding streets, Byzantine churches, mosques, and an oriental bazaar. These juxtapositions require explanation. This book explores the development of the city of Athens after the beginning of Greek independence in 1830. It presents the process of creation of a neo-classical capital, in the place of a pre-existing town with the remains of a long history. An array of chapters examine the treatment of the pre-revolutionary town; its connection with the neo-classical city; the position of old churches in this antiquity-centred capital; and the factors that influenced the implementation of the projects for the new capital and their consequences for the city’s evolution. All this will be placed in its European context, explaining how the construction of modern Athens relates heavily to the influence of the ‘great’ European capitals. This is valuable reading for students and researchers interested in urban design, urban geography, and modern Greek history.

Winner of the Duff Cooper Prize • One of The Economist's top history books of the year From one of our leading historians, an important new history of the Greek War of Independence—the ultimate worldwide liberal cause célèbre of the age of Byron, Europe’s first nationalist uprising, and the beginning of the downward spiral of the Ottoman Empire—published two hundred years after its outbreak As Mark Mazower shows us in his enthralling and definitive new account, myths about the Greek War of Independence outpaced the facts from the very beginning, and for good reason. This was an unlikely cause, against long odds, a disorganized collection of Greek patriots up against what was still one of the most storied empires in the world, the Ottomans. The revolutionaries needed all the help they could get. And they got it as Europeans and Americans embraced the idea that the heirs to ancient Greece, the wellspring of Western civilization, were fighting for their freedom against the proverbial Eastern despot, the Turkish sultan. This was Christianity versus Islam, now given urgency by new ideas about the nation-state and democracy that were shaking up the old order. Lord Byron is only the most famous of the combatants who went to Greece to fight and die—along with many more who followed events passionately and supported the cause through art, music, and humanitarian aid. To many who did go, it was a rude awakening to find that the Greeks were a far cry from their illustrious forebears, and were often hard to tell apart from the Ottomans. Mazower does full justice to the realities on the ground as a revolutionary conspiracy triggered outright rebellion, and a fraying and distracted Ottoman leadership first missed the plot and then overreacted disastrously. He shows how and why ethnic cleansing commenced almost immediately on both sides. By the time the dust settled, Greece was free, and Europe was changed forever. It was a victory for a completely new kind of politics—international in its range and affiliations, popular in its origins, romantic in sentiment, and radical in its goals. It was here on the very edge of Europe that the first successful revolution took place in which a people claimed liberty for themselves and overthrew an entire empire to attain it, transforming diplomatic norms and the direction of European politics forever, and inaugurating a new world of nation-states, the world in which we still live.

Greece sits at the center of a geopolitical storm that threatens the stability of the European Union. To comprehend how this small country precipitated such an outsized crisis, it is necessary to understand how Greece developed into a nation in the first place. Enlightenment and Revolution identifies the ideological traditions that shaped a religious community of Greek-speaking people into a modern nation-state--albeit one in which antiliberal forces have exacted a high price. Paschalis Kitromilides takes in the vast sweep of the Greek Enlightenment in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, assessing developments such as the translation of modern authors into Greek; the scientific revolution; the rediscovery of the civilization of classical Greece; and a powerful countermovement. He shows how Greek thinkers such as Voulgaris and Korais converged with currents of the European Enlightenment, and demonstrates how the Enlightenment's confrontation with Church-sanctioned ideologies shaped present-day Greece. When the nation-state emerged from a decade-long revolutionary struggle against the Ottoman Empire in the early nineteenth century, the dream of a free Greek polity was soon overshadowed by a romanticized nationalist and authoritarian vision. The failure to create a modern liberal state at that decisive moment is at the root of Greece's recent troubles.

Builders, Housewives and the Construction of Modern Athens reassesses the explosive growth of postwar Athens through its most distinctive building type, the polykatoikía, and its different connotations through the decades: from a monotonous and ugly element of the city to the role it might play in the urban sustainability. Sprawling beneath the Acropolis, modern Athens is commonly viewed in negative terms: congested, ugly and monotonous. Builders, Housewives and the Construction of Modern Athens questions this stereotype, reassessing the explosive growth of postwar Athens through its most distinctive building type: the polykatoikía (a small-scale multistory apartment block). Theocharopoulou re-evaluates the polykatoikía as a low-tech, easily constructible innovation that stimulated the postwar urban economy, triggering the city's social mid-twentieth-century transformation. The interiors of the polykatoikía apartments reflect a desire for modernity as marketed to housewives through film and magazines. Regular builders became unlikely allies in designing these polykatoikía interiors, enabling inhabitants to exert agency over their daily lives and the shape of the postwar city. This revised edition of Theocharopoulou's study draws on popular media as well as urban and regional planning theory, cultural studies and anthropology to examine the evolution of this phenomenon. Written in the light of Greece's recent financial crisis, the book's updated Postscript considers the role polykatoikía might play in building an equitable and sustainable twenty-first-century city.

When this work – one that contributes to both the history and anthropology fields – first appeared in 1982, it was hailed as a landmark study of the role of folklore in nation-building. It has since been highly influential in reshaping the analysis of Greek and European cultural dynamics. In this expanded edition, a new introduction by the author and an epilogue by Sharon Macdonald document its importance for the emergence of serious anthropological interest in European culture and society and for current debates about Greece’s often contested place in the complex politics of the European Union.