For a while I looked at the warm Athenian ocher in this deserted house near the Singru hospital. Caravel and Hilton are a stone’s throw away, Michalakopoulou and modern life. But in the place where I was, on Ublianis Street, before me were the ghosts of a former life, the very ones that touch those who remember the city. And here, in a small house, uninhabited and seemingly insignificant from the point of view of architecture and even aesthetics, covered with fine mesh to keep the plaster, I saw before me the immortal colors of Attica. And I revived with my imagination the old masters, watercolors, the spirit of matter. The two windows, like empty eyes, seemed lifeless, but the warm plaster contained all the juices of the sweet Mediterranean. Athens on a lower scale, noble in poverty.

But somewhere out there, in that part of Ilisias, which began to be massively built up after the construction of the Hilton, you can find those fragments of other times. Houses without amenities for the most part, which, although there are few left, have almost disappeared, but can still convey information and emotions. The old form of the quarter can be understood from the corner of Diokharos and Umbriani. Small houses in clusters, estates, courtyards and a two-story early modernist style, below a house with warm ocher and here and there on the streets below scattered, meager examples of that primitive urbanism. Throughout this corner of Umbria, the essence of the pre-war era is preserved – perhaps for a long time – in sum and concentration. What bothered me was the ruined house, the abandoned remains, the funeral. And in this desolation, a meeting with what I considered precious, like ocher skin, like a glow from a captured trench, or those doors in a row in a now empty courtyard, like women in an old dance. On the opposite side, one could see the bright blue gate at 23 Diochar, the stonework around which was deliberately cleared while it was built to be covered with plaster. The superstructure on the side is light, a simple castle of the 20s and a concrete yard from the opening. Trampled cement, wet, dusty, with cracks, traces, grooves, an element of unholy holiness in a landscape of unexpected urban spontaneity.

All these receipts were received as a gift, easily and naturally. Away, at 3 Ublianis Street, the old garden lies dry and barren. The gate is painted a soft green, reminiscent of eucalyptus, as is the large old trunk that crowns the whole estate. In the background is a small mansion, two rooms, all closed and abandoned. These images had the power of the eternal and the ephemeral at the same time, like a silent walk through a cemetery with memorial plaques perpetuating the memory of people who are no longer alive.

I knew that sooner or later it would all be swept away. Like everything that was before and that I remember many years ago was swept away by the law of life on these very streets. Everything will go away and that warm ocher, Athenian, which some painters would like to study and capture at least as a keepsake.