The Breeder is a fairly typical 21st-century art gallery: three storeys of bare concrete and whitewashed walls hidden on a pot-holed side street of a crumbling inner city neighbourhood. At least it would be typical in the Meatpacking district of New York, or Hoxton in London, yet here in Athens there is a sense that something important is happening that goes well beyond the cliches of cool and the poseurs that pursue it.
After years of frustration and disappointment – with politics, with the economy or even with the squandered legacy of the 2004 Olympic Games – a creative rage is taking hold that is transforming this ancient city into an energetic, exciting metropolis.
For three thousand years the Acropolis, seat of the magnificent Parthenon, has been the obvious, magnetic draw for foreign travellers. In contrast, the contemporary city that has almost swamped these ancient wonders has been sniffed at as noisy, shambolic and polluted.
For centuries Athens slumbered, a mere village among the ruins. By the early 20th century it remained a small, elegant town until the second world war, the civil war and then the huge demographic shift that began in the 1950s and shows no sign of ending.
Millions of Greeks moved to the city from the islands and the mountains. The regular earthquakes that plague the area make it impossible to build upwards so they build outwards, throwing out four and five-storey concrete blocks on virtually every patch of land between the imposing mountains and the sea at Piraeus.
And it is a transformation that continues, with huge numbers of domestic migrants being replaced across swathes of the poorest neighbourhoods by newer arrivals from places like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan and Somalia.
All the while, a fascinating modern city has been emerging almost unnoticed by the outside world.
At the vanguard are, of course, the artists. The epidemic of graffiti may have reached a peak during the riots of December 2008, sparked when a policeman fatally shot an Athens teenager, but they still turn whitewashed walls into a spray-painted kaleidoscope of slogans and scribbles.
The rebels are now being embraced by large sections of society and the journey from the walls of Exarchia, the hip student-dominated neighbourhood at the heart of the street rebellion, to the emerging artistic elite on the walls of galleries in Metaxourgio can be a remarkably short one.
One young anarchist who is causing something of a sensation is Stelios Faitakis. His strangely prophetic work uses Byzantine iconography to depict the death of a worker at the hands of the police and then the mass popular violence that follows. This work was completed only a year before remarkably similar events shook Athens to its core.
Stathis Panagoulis, owner of The Breeder, the gallery that displays this work, sees optimism in this climate.
He says: “The young people are more confident now. They are tired of the way things were. They want change, and they are making it happen.”
Many of the biggest changes are being led by people who are not really rebels at all. Panagiotis Arkoumaneas is CEO of the newly formed Athens Tourism and Economic Development Company (ATEDCO), the organisation tasked with promoting the city.
He recognises that Athens has been punching below its considerable weight for decades, its greatest treasure becoming a hindrance.
“The biggest challenge we face is convincing people in Greece that Athens needs to be promoted at all. They think that as long as we have the Acropolis, people will come. That’s true, but we have barely begun to attract European city-break visitors who need more than just ruins and museums. They want restaurants, bars, music, hotels, shopping and modern architecture. We have all of that but most people don’t know it. We receive millions of visitors even with all the bad publicity. Imagine the potential if we promote it seriously.”
One of the many under-appreciated areas is the district of Gazi just to the west of the tourist hub of Monastiraki. Once little more than an industrial estate, it has been transformed into a sophisticated playground, with dozens of places to eat, drink and party. The restaurants are rarely busy before 10pm and the bars and nightclubs that pepper the narrow streets remain lively until dawn, populated with a refreshingly unpretentious Athenian crowd.
Accommodation too is every bit as laid-back. The recently opened Fashion House hotel sits on Omonia square, the heart of immigrant Athens. In a move that embraces the graffiti that covers the area the hotel allows guests to scribble, paint or draw on the walls inside the building.
Perhaps even more radical is the willingness of the exclusive St George Lycabettus hotel to encourage families with young children (usually greeted with horror by boutique hotels of this standard) to stay. It even puts on a children’s Sunday brunch in the ultra-hip Frame restaurant with a pleasing lack of formality.
But for a new wave of tourists more interested in spontaneous energy than museum-like decorum, Athens is a city to embrace. There’s no need to spray paint the walls but feel free to grab some crayons and scribble on the tablecloth.
After all, a quiet rebellion is good for the soul.
GETTING THERE
KLM (www.klm.co.uk) fly from Glasgow to Athens via Amsterdam from £120 including taxes and charges. BA (www.ba.com) fly from Glasgow and Edinburgh to Athens via London from £130 return including taxes and charges.
WHERE TO STAY
St George Lycabettus, from €150 per night, www.sglycabettus.gr
Fashion House Hotel, from €120 per night www.classicalhotels.com
Museum Hotel, €85 per night www.museum-hotel.gr
GENERAL INFORMATION
www.breathtakingathens.com
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