Page 283 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Greek Islands

The bustling market of Monastraki

ATHENS

The birthplace of European civilization, Athens
has been inhabited for millennia. The ancient city
experienced a golden age in the 5th century BC,
when Athenian leader Perikles commissioned
many new buildings, including most of the
structures on the Acropolis. This was the time
when great tragedies and comedies were written
and performed, and Aristotle and Socrates opened
schools of philosophy. Athens led the Delian
League, a union of Greek cities, but came into
conflict with the other leading city-state, Sparta,
resulting in a major 30-year-conflict known as
the Peloponnesian War. By its end, Athens lay
defeated, its golden age over. The city became a
part of the Roman Empire in 146 BC, starting
centuries of occupation by various powers from
the Byzantine to the Ottoman empires. In 1821,
Greek people across the islands and mainland rose
up in the War of Independence against the ruling
Ottomans and created the Greek State. Athens
was declared its capital in 1834. After World War II,
which Athens spent occupied by the German army,
the city sprawled out into suburbs housing the
multitudes of people migrating from rural areas.
A military coup overthrew the democratically
elected government in 1967, and mass protests
by students in 1973 resulted in a violent suppres-
sion by military forces. Now a large, buzzing and
democratic city, still with a significant student
population, Athens is a concrete metropolis, its
walls a noted canvas for world-class street art.
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