Sing Muse… The Beginning

NOTE: I was without Internet for the duration of this trip, so I typed up my blog posts in advance, while everything was still fresh.  All of them will be posted in quick succession now.

Friday August 24 ATHENS, GREECE –

Greece in August is hot as balls.  It’s actually quite remarkable.  But, setting that aside, it really is a lovely country.

I had already been to Athens and various islands before I started blogging; so my post on Athens will be admittedly lacking.  But, to catch you up…

The National Archeological Museum is definitely worth a look (my family spent about three hours just wandering the first time we visited, but then we’re really into archeological museums.) and the Forum, the Agora, and the Temple of Olympian Zeus are worth stopping by for a few minutes to take pictures (there’s really not much left of any of them). 

Those are the major sites I skipped this trip.  Retrospectively, I wish I had made the trip out to the Archeological Museum (basically everything except the Museum is within walking distance of Syntagma Square) instead of going to the Benaki Museum; but at least I now know that the Benaki museum isn’t really that interesting.

The Benaki Museum essentially takes a look at Greek art from Neolithic to modern day.  I like Classical Greek sculpture as much as the next girl (actually, considering my peer group, I like Classical Greek sculpture quite a bit more than the next girl) but I get mildly annoyed when it isn’t clearly curated.  I’m pretty good with mythology, but I don’t know all the symbols tied to each God; so it’s nice to have a sign telling me what I’m looking at.  Personally, I walk pretty quickly past the religious Icons.  I do informally study religion for my Global Scholar certificate, but I can’t even come close to keeping the saints straight and the older paintings of the Madonna and Child are kind of creepy looking, so they’re mostly lost on me.

As you work your way up, the exhibits get more and more modern.  The stuff from the Romantic period is especially interesting to me because that is the period of the Greek War for Independence.  There are lots of gloriously nationalistic paintings to be found from that period.  Interestingly, during the period of occupation by the Ottomans, the Greek Orthodox Church served as the safeguard of Greek history, culture, and language.  Most of the precious sculptures from antiquity (for example: the massive, ivory and gold statues of Pallas Athena from the Parthenon and Zeus from the Athenian temple of Olympian Zeus) were stolen away by the Ottomans and were destroyed along with most of Istanbul in a fire, but the Church protected the history of Greek culture even in the face of occupation.  So that’s pretty cool.  When I was there, there was also a special exhibit on about artists as jewelry designers, which I have to say was much more interesting solely because it was better curated.  It was very easy to figure out what I was looking at, which is always a plus.

After the Benaki Museum, I pretty much just wandered around down a few side streets.  While I can’t tell you what streets I was on, I found a few blocks of chocolate shops, a few super fancy looking jewelry stores, and a supremely creepy store run by a “poet sandal maker”.  The walls were essentially lined with pictures of famous people – and occasionally family members of famous people – who had shopped at the store, but that didn’t stop it from feeling incredibly creepy.  According to my guidebook, that particular store is a must see in Athens but I must disagree.

And, of course, I visited the Acropolis and New Parthenon Museum.  Not quite realizing how close it was to my hotel I took a needless metro ride one stop from Syntagma to Akropoli.  Trains in Athens come about every 6 minutes at around 8 AM, which, if you’ve just missed a train, seems like an interminably long period of time.  On the plus side, everything still looks very new.  To me, it’s insane that the Parthenon is still standing.  Thanks to a few architectural tricks, it has withstood a number of earthquakes, but the universe has basically worked to destroy the building since the Persians invaded Athens.  The first time the Persians came after what is now Greece, they burned down the Parthenon so Pericles (Full disclosure, I thought he was another one of Shakespeare’s inventions until I went to the Parthenon the first time I was in Athens.  Then I found out he was a real dude.) organized a campaign to rebuild a newer and better temple to Athena.  That actually stuck around for a while.  Then the Byzantine Christians came and turned it into a church.  To do this, they felt it necessary loot the place and chip off a lot of the pagan friezes and decorations.  A little later it was turned into a mosque when the Ottomans took over.  These same Ottomans later stopped using it as a mosque, and started using it to store explosive materials.  This did not end well for the walls of the temple; the ordinance exploded and took out about half of the building.  After this, the ravages of time took over.  And you know what, there’s still a building there.  The propylea and the Temple of Nike is pretty damn intact; the Estrucheon is in really good shape; the Carytids (now located in the New Museum) are in pretty good well preserved; there’s still an olive tree where Athena supposedly planted it; and the columns of the Parthenon are still standing.  Sure there’s been some restoration work done (ok a lot of restoration work), but it is amazing to me that so much is still there.

Of course so much more would be there if it hadn’t been for that asshole Lord Elgin.  It’s actually weirdly sad to walk through the New Museum (which is gorgeous) because about half of the artifacts have notation saying “reproduction, BM” because about half of the remains of the Parthenon are in the British Museum.  Now I get that the British stole their diamonds, the Rosetta Stone, and a bunch of other stuff fair and square, but I find it mildly annoying that they won’t give back the Parthenon Marbles.  Greece was never a British colony.  Those marbles need to go home.  I mean hell, the Greeks built a whole new museum for them.  They’d have a lovely home.  In fact, the way the New Museum is laid out, they’d have a better home.  In the British Museum, the marbles are basically at painting height, which (if you’re even close to on the smaller side or too shy to push through masses of people) makes them kind of hard to see through the throngs that come to look at them every day.  At the New Museum, they’re raised so that you have to look up at them.  This makes them a lot easier to see.  So, in summation: seriously England, give back the Parthenon Marbles.

Finally I will leave you with this link.  It will take you to my creative writing blog where I have told the story of the patronage of Athens for fun.  It’s definitely at the top of my list of favorite stories from Ancient Greece, so it was kind of fun to retell.  Enjoy.