[MGSA-L] 'Not everything's for sale': Greeks mobilise as new hotels obscure Acropolis views

June Samaras june.samaras at gmail.com
Sun Mar 10 16:17:54 PDT 2019


'Not everything's for sale': Greeks mobilise as new hotels obscure
Acropolis views

Athens’ tourism boom capitalises on building regulations relaxed in the
economic crisis

USE THE LINK TO SEE THE PICTURES

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/mar/08/not-everythings-for-sale-greeks-mobilise-as-new-hotels-obscure-acropolis-views-athens

Helena Smith in Athens
Fri 8 Mar 2019 14.00 GMT Last modified on Fri 8 Mar 2019 16.44 GMT

The 10-storey hotel at 5 Falirou street in Athens was always going to stand
out. Built to impress, its handsomely modernist wood-panelled facade added
a contemporary touch to the streetscape of the otherwise lacklustre popular
Makriyanni area beneath the Acropolis.

But as local residents watched it go up over the winter, they became ever
more concerned. By February, when it had reached 31.5 metres, the hotel was
the tallest building in the neighbourhood and had started to impede what
had once been uninterrupted views of the Parthenon and the 5000BC
monument’s fortified walls.


City with a past: why classical and modern Athens are at war

“Suddenly, it was taller than the new Acropolis museum itself,” said Irini
Frezadou, pointing to the building from her rooftop down the road. “This is
meant to be an area of archaeological protection. Our zoning laws are
partly to blame but a construction of such gigantic dimensions was never
approved by the central archaeological council.”

Battle lines are being drawn in the skies above Athens’ historic city
centre from the rooftops of locals galvanised into action by the prospect
of multi-storey buildings being constructed within metres of the Periclean
masterpiece, one of the world’s premier heritage sites.

With word spreading of a “wall of high-rise hotels” being planned around
the Acropolis in the coming years, Frezadou, a Swiss-trained architect and
urban planner, is spearheading a campaign to stop the building spree,
initiating a petition on the online activist network Avaaz that has already
collected upwards of 25,000 signatures.

“Clearly, what we need urgently in the name of sustainability is new
building and urban planning rules,” she said.

 Irini Frezadou does not have to look far to get angry. The grassy plot
behind her own apartment block has been designated for an even bigger hotel
with three underground parking floors and a pool garden on top.

Activists have gone to Greece’s highest administrative court, the Council
of State, to ask for permits for approval to be revoked.

“We are not taking any chances,” said Andreas Papapetropoulos, the lawyer
representing the campaigners, adding that hundreds have signed a class
action suit brought before the court in recent weeks. “We’re not absurdist,
we recognise Athens has a need for good hotels, but not at the expense of
our greatest monument. We will campaign for the building on Falirou street
not to be demolished but certainly reduced in height.”

Far from being a hub for violent anti-austerity protests synonymous with
the country’s economic crisis, its reputation not that long ago, Athens is
in the grip of an unprecedented tourist boom.

Makriyanni, like Koukaki, its adjacent neighbourhood south of the
Acropolis, are go-to places for the ever-increasing Airbnb tourists
flocking to a city that is expected to host more than 5 million visitors
this year – nearly half of the country’s entire population.

But the influx has come at a cost. Increasingly, international investors
are taking advantage of controversial construction regulations passed at
the height of the crisis that permit bigger and taller buildings if they
meet “green” standards.

None know this better than Elliniki Etairia, a conservation watchdog housed
in a neo-classical building in Plaka, Athens’ oldest continuously inhabited
district, directly below the ancient citadel. “When we heard that buildings
were going up that were obscuring views of the Acropolis, the symbol of
democracy, we immediately saw it as a national emergency and began
bombarding every government office that we could,” said Lydia Carras, the
organisation’s president.

“There are certain views, not many in the world, that are views of
identity, and the Parthenon is one of them that at all costs has to be
preserved.”

 Parthenon.
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 The moon rises over the Parthenon on the ancient Acropolis hill in Athens.
Photograph: Petros Giannakouris/AP
Unlike other major European metropolises, Athens escaped the phenomenon of
the high-rise precisely because of the fear that multi-storey blocks would
overshadow the capital’s greatest showpiece. As a result only one, a
28-storey bloc known as the Athens Tower, was constructed under the
curatorship of Greece’s then-military dictatorship in the 1970s.

Under pressure, Athens’ leftist government announced this week that the new
construction licences in the archaeological buffer zone around the
Acropolis would be temporarily suspended. Pledging to create a committee to
review zoning laws in the area, it said permits for buildings higher than
17.5 metres would be banned for the next year.

Insisting on everyone’s right to view the monument, Greece’s culture
minister, Myrsini Zorba, acknowledged the protests had to be taken into
account. “A view is a cultural good and in no circumstance can it be turned
into a privilege for the few. We ought to be responsive to the protest of
civil society so that rule of law and a sense of justice are upheld.”

However, privately culture ministry officials admit they are in a bind,
hamstrung by laws that allow for taller buildings. “As archaeologists we
are called to work in the ground, not up in the air,” said one. “This was
legislation passed by the environment ministry.”

Across Europe, conservationists are watching closely and they insist they
will hold the Greek government to account. “This is an extremely important
battle that has to be won,” said Sneška Quaedvlieg-Mihailović, the
secretary general of Europa Nostra, widely regarded as the voice of
cultural heritage in Europe.

“We are not against new buildings of contemporary architecture but they
have to respect the heritage settings of European cities. A view of the
Acropolis is the most miraculous of any to be had,” she told the Guardian.
“Fortunately, civil society has taken a very strong stance. What we expect
now is a very clear signal from national authorities that not everything is
for sale.”

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June Samaras
2020 Old Station Rd
Streetsville,Ontario
Canada L5M 2V1
Tel : 905-542-1877
E-mail : june.samaras at gmail.com
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