In an interview for a local architecture and design journal the ambassador of France in Athens (the darling of local feather-headed socialites and self-adoring literati with roots in the turgid depths of modern French word-mongering trying to cajole some kind of French state distinction or benefit from him) declared his admiration for the city of Athens as a vibrant hub of culture and entertainment. We will let that pass. He went on to acknowledge the ugliness of the place, which he immediately excused, however, by saying that when the refugees poured in from Asia Minor in the twenties of the previous century architectural aesthetics and urban planning were the last thing on their mind. What they needed, he said, was a just a roof over their heads procured in whatever manner possible and stitched together from whatever materials were at hand.

This is precisely wrong. This is an example of the well-meaning flattery by many foreigners of the thoughtless pretensions of the local elites, which under a hypocritical veil of "social" consciousness, do nothing but sustain long standing nationalist myths about this society.

The refugees had absolutely nothing to do with the present awfulness of a city which back in the thirties, for instance, was a charming example of European elegance and charm, what with wide boulevards, neoclassical edifices and pleasant tree-filled squares appointed with academic but expressive classically referenced statuary. The refugees did indeed build hastily the ramshackle banlieues that girded the historical center of the city, but there was nothing ugly or inhuman about their construction. Actually, their habitations exuded the spontaneous folk spirit of the peasant communities they hailed from, and it would have been a great cultural and historical boon if they had been preserved. They were filled with the spirit of human solidarity and pulsated with the elemental desire of human beings to fulfill the deep and sacred needs that define their humanity. These communities were suffused with the age-old wisdom of people who live in tune with the eternal rhythms of nature, and their peasant humbleness constituted an appropriate complement to the official neoclassical city, thus affirming in splendid visual terms the vaunted cultural continuity of the Hellenic ages which official education had reduced to dry-as-dust and hence repulsive rhetorical formulas.

Ever since, both the stately face of Athenian classicism as well as the organic, earth-rooted harmony of the refugee districts have been wantonly demolished. And at a time when all the war-ravaged cities of Europe east and west were exerting themselves to reconstitute their historical image and recover the brutally assailed past of their civilization, one of the most important historical cities of the continent was in fact systematically destroying all visible testimonies of its cultural legacy. This amounts to a despicable act of cultural vandalism, one of the most egregious ones to grace the annals of human folly.

So what brought about the present abomination, the utter ruin of all character and the reduction of this monstrous urban area to a concrete and iron cage for beings who have shed all inner feeling, tenderness, grace and historical awareness?