Like any other foreigner who enters the Greek capital, we feel the expected anxiety of admiring its most iconic set of monuments.
Fences near the Akropoli metro station prevent us from seeing it.
Even dazzled by the intense light of the almost Mediterranean summer, we noticed an unexpected sign, we reoriented ourselves and advanced along the southern slope of the plateau that housed the ancient citadel.
We wander into a forest of olive trees, stone pines and cedars. The Dionysiou Areopagitou trail reveals secrets kept by the foliage and time: the Roman cistern, the access road to the amphitheater Odeon of Herodes Atticus, hidden by the vegetation.
After the junction with via Rovertou Galli, the Sacred Church of San Demetrius Loumbardiaris, isolated in a providential clearing.
An Orthodox-Christian Morning
On this Sunday morning, life germinates like never before in the Acropolis forest. Being the orthodox Lord's Day of the week, the priest of the temple has hardly enough hands for the planned baptisms.
Believers, family members and guests enter the chapel, all of them in a trademark elegance that contrasts with the ascetic blackness of the priest.
Light candles.
This reinforces the light that yellows the images of saints and martyrs that adorn the brick walls.
When a new baptism leaves the temple to the pine cone, we feel in excess. We are back outside, green and fresh. And to the starting point.
A few meters to the south, the prison of Socrates remains, so named because it is believed that the philosopher was held there before his trial and execution by poisoning, in 399 BC, accused of rejecting the gods praised by Athens and of morally corrupting youth from the city.
We reverse. we get in the way Theories. Moments later, we find the plaque that exposes the sermon that the Apostle Paul gave to the Council and Supreme Court that functioned on the same hill of Ares that we were looking for.
It was 51 years after the birth of Jesus Christ. Paul spoke determined to make the Athenians exchange the idolatry in their idols for the Faith in God and the Savior. Some time later, as we had just seen in the Sacred Church of Saint Demetrius Loumbardiaris, his intention would be fulfilled.
The trail that leads to the rugged top of Areopagus proves to be slippery.
At last balanced and stable, we let ourselves be dazzled by what the hill reveals to us.
Acropolis of Athens, and the View to Classical Greece
To the east, highlighted above a wave of vegetation, overshadowed by dense but white clouds, loomed the Acropolis: the Parthenon temple, the sanctuary of Zeus, the temple of Athena and other sanctuaries and buildings that make up the historical core of Athenian civilization. .
A front of houses almost as white as the clouds invaded the adjacent forest.
It allowed us to understand what surrounded the Acropolis in almost all other directions: the modern houses of contemporary Athens, home to more than 600.000 citizens, if considered a mere municipality.
More than three million, if we take into account the urban area that surrounds it and that fills the region of Attica.
Satisfied with the new achievement, we returned to the foot of the Acropolis.
Plaka and the Neighboring and Discordant Neighborhoods of Athens
We point to the annexed and almost pedestrian neighborhood of Plaka, the best preserved in the Greek capital, a picturesque and colorful part of Athens that lifts the veil to what any visitor to Greece will find on the Greek islands of the Aegean and Ionian Seas.
There we come across a first showcase, not touristy at all, of the alphabet, architecture, gastronomy, moussakas, fasoladas, the other smells, colors and even tones of voices characteristic of the Hellenic nation.
This, noting that Crete to Macedonia, such characteristics multiply and differentiate in countless variants.
In the less polished times of the 70s, instead of cafes and restaurants, souvenir shops and the like, the Plaka neighborhood concentrated Athens' nightlife, full of suspicious and noisy nightclubs and nightclubs.
Too noisy and repellent for the reception strategy that the authorities outlined, aiming for a pleasant and harmonious city, grandiose, up to the age-old heritage that almost all outsiders yearned to contemplate.
This time, the authorities got the upper hand. Such triumphs are not always easy in Athens.
Echárchia, an Always Dissatisfied and Leftist Dominion
From what we know, over time, the Athenians – especially their young students – became contentious and irascible. Satisfied with the bougainvillea, the stairs, the terraces and the cheerful decorations of Plaka, we let ourselves go.
We move on to the neighborhoods of Monastiraki and Echárchia.
The streets become darker, dirtier and oppressive. Creative murals give way to fight paintings. We cannot remember any other place on Earth with such a concentration of graffitied protests.
For a long time now, Echárchia has welcomed the city's out of touch and nonconformist souls and minds. It preserves an old reputation as a leftist, socialist, anti-fascist and often anarchist stronghold. Unsurprisingly, it also became the preferred domain of Athenian intellectuals and creators.
During the 2008-2009 financial crisis, when Greece succumbed to its gigantic debt, suffered opposition from the countries of northern Europe and found itself in the controlling arms of the IMF, Echárchia and its residents and children, remained more active than Never.
Greece is still struggling to get around these times. She is guided, as always, by the European City of Wisdom and Reason. The city of Socrates, Pericles, Sophocles and Plato.
And of Athenian democracy, the form of government that allows the people of Echarchia, Monastiraki, Akadimia and beyond, to disagree, debate and often even – facts beyond any value judgment – to exaggerate and damage Athens and the Greek state.
Ascent to the Historic Heights of the Acropolis
As a tribute to the respectful form of government in which we had the privilege of growing up, we undertake a new ascension. We had already admired the Acropolis from a distance. It was time for us to attend.
We go around the plateau again, this time along the Peripatos path, and along its northern foothills. We go up through the Portico Beulé, to the terrace between the temple of Athena Nice and the Monument of Agrippa.
We cross the monumental entrance to the Propylaea. The Doric and Ionic columns of the supreme temple of Athena, ordered by Pericles, appear.
At the opposite end of the plateau, in front of the Temple of Rome and Augustus, we notice that the stripes on a visitor's T-shirt almost emulate the blue and white stripes on the Greek flag.
We approach the wall that surrounds the rocky platform.
From there, we go back to praising the endless dirty white houses of Athens, as if pierced by the forested protuberance of Mount Lycabettus (277m), the zenith of the city.
And the Conquest of Mount Lycabettus, the Zenith of Athens
We would also conquer it, cheating on the convenient funicular that departs from half a hill in the Dexameni district.
Athens may not have seven hills, like Rome, the rival of the Classical Era, or like Lisbon. It has, however, ups and downs that keep us exercised, eager to mussaka and Hellenic specialties that are equally or more caloric.
The view from Mount Lycabettus reveals part of the old Panathenaic stadium, site of the pioneering Olympic Games of the Modern Era, in 1896. It reveals the north face of the Acropolis.
And, halfway down, the surreal view of the Parthenon overlooking a community of buildings carved into dozens of flowery balconies, protected from the sun by matching white and cream awnings.
Syntagma Square and the Most Famous Choreography in the City
Without quite knowing how, the descent leaves us at Syntagma Square.
We enter the political and social core of Athens and, consequently, of Greece, where, since 1934, the Parliament occupies the old, sumptuous and neoclassical Royal Palace, surrounded by the national gardens.
Over there, next to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the Presencial Guard carries out a unique changing of the guard, Greek and Hellenic to the very marrow of the bones. military who have the privilege to execute it.
The choreography is repeated from hour to hour. Lucky, we have little to wait.
Soldiers protected from the sun by caps with pendants, tucked into black-gold waistcoats, in white tunics-skirts that sway above high stockings and ocher shoes, with pom-pom tips, repeat steps, standing upright and angled shotgun.
One towards the other and then back to their lairs.
After the ceremony, in a marathon of exploration that we insisted on winning, we passed by Hadrian's Arch and the Olympic Temple of Zeus that Hadrian dedicated to the Father of the Greek Gods.
The next morning, we set sail from the port of Piraeus to the archipelago of the Cyclades.
Aware of the urgency of the return and of how much Athens still had to unveil.
