A beautiful letter came to the office the other day. Having opened it, I made a short trip to those times when readers bothered to send us letters. By handwriting, you immediately understand a lot about the psyche of writers. Now the temperament is diligently hiding behind a faceless computer font. The man who took up the pen for the sake of the column was the urban architect Alexandros Papageorgiou-Venetas. He wanted to write down his impressions after the first walk in the shadow of the Acropolis, which he took after the pandemic. He wanted to follow in the footsteps of his teacher Dimitris Pikionis, who managed to transform the Philopappos Hill with worthy folk craftsmen.

“Crossing…”

“Day walk, getting to know your favorite places. Rebaptism in the “fatherlands”. “With this light, with this soil, here to my end, but also there,” my teacher whispers to me, and I answer the spirit of Dimitris Pikionis with one of my poems: “I followed the steps to the end of you.” Yes, for many decades, all my life, I stubbornly walked in this space, experienced and studied and wrote it to the best of my ability. The historical landscape has gone through several stages of discrediting and desecration. Those of us who loved it suffered deeply. And then suddenly, the apocalypse that reassures you: the space is delicately designed without undue interference, nowhere abandoned or ugly and a lively crowd of Athenians – especially now in winter – who gracefully absorb the history and shape of the landscape, whether to know or ignore the beauty.

“Time has passed, two generations from the 1960s, and today young people in the tunnel of misunderstood modernity have learned to love and respect a unique environment. What caused the positive development? Belated interest of archaeologists? Interventions of the Society for the Association of Archaeological Monuments? An attempt to promote the “tourist capital”? Man’s need for breathing and contemplation in times of distress? Different reasons with a comforting result,” writes the great historian of urban planning.

But not everything is pleasant. “Your work on Lumbardiaris, teacher, after much suffering has remained untouched, although slightly preserved, but unused for years. The businessman who offers Greek coffee only with a bagel on a beautiful terrace with a frontal view of the Parthenon is not found, and the municipality is shrinking,” he adds, but remains positive from a pleasant autopsy: “And yet your spirit, teacher, who called us to “ pit of submission,” that is, in modesty, would be happy today in the slanting midday light. Everything did not go as we would like, but something valuable was obtained. The Athenians no longer insult the historic site. Stop “earthly dishonor”, insulting the soil of the Motherland, which you have civilized. I am happy today to look down from the height of Pnikos. Nostos Atticos.