Modern Athens is a bustling, overgrown city, continually coming to terms
with its illustrious past. Dominated by the Parthenon, the world-famous
symbol of classical antiquity, it has been touched by every aspect of
Greece's turbulent history, suffering invasions and occupations, sieges,
division and dictatorship, and has grown dramatically into a metropolis
of four million people. Mixing old and new, the Greek capital is a
treasure house of eastern Orthodox and western culture, rich in the
visual arts, architecture and poetry. Michael Llewellyn Smith describes
the history and culture of Athens, site of the 2004 Olympic Games and
city of monuments enduring, purged and restored. Exploring its streets
and squares, he reveals layers of Ancient Greek, Roman and Byzantine
history, elegant Bavarian neoclassical buildings, and a modern city of
concrete and glass, metro and tram. - The city of visitors: treasure
hunters and Philhellenes; Byron and Chateaubriand; Thackeray and Mark
Twain; Freud, Virigina Woolf and Winston Churchill. - The city of
Olympians: host of the first modern Games of 1896 and the Olympiad of
2004; the revival of the Olympic idea. - The city of Athenians:
classical soldiers and thinkers; poets, politicians and princes;
migrants and refugees from Greece and beyond.