In the heart of Athens in the last century, there are streets like Isairon, Smolenskaya or Tsimiski, streets mythologized in the urban imagination but invisible in the official history of the capital. I walked, persistently, deliberately and painstakingly, Harilau Trikoupi, to the point of exhaustion, in order to pass through the pores of mental images and sensations as it happened on previous routes along the same paths, some 20-30 years ago. The Athenian state remains unchanged, fluid in time, stable in consciousness.

What fascinated me now is not only observing the present, but also thinking about the tunnel of time, how now, with the experience of countless wanderings, what was once new has gained a touch, and what was once indifferent is now striking. My present self walks this frontier of Naples and Exarchia with a palimpsest of glimpses, layers of time, shadows of people. What touches me today is a 1960 apartment building.

And on the passes of Harilau Trikoupi and Mavromichalis from Kallidromiou and above, where I walked with this longing to meet familiar sediments, I saw what I always wanted. Athens as a continuum, without intersections and divisions, an urban sea of ​​houses and apartments, ultimately a chaotic but emotionally charged legacy that we all fit into, all the passers-by around us and myself.

A photo that appeared a little by chance on Harilaou Trikoupi 115 showed me what I felt: the combination of Athens in the 20th century. In the entryway of that apartment building, with its characteristic rebated wooden door, double-glazed windows and the doris of district modernism of the 1960s, I saw the reflection of a one-story neoclassical building opposite, at number 118. And it was a composition, but also something perfect, as a reminder of the great the size and density of the city. The neoclassical house that I saw preserved, I remember in ruins, and the apartment building that made me stop, I remember never noticing it.

Up and down these narrow streets that cross the main streets of Exarchia and Naples, from Asklepiou to Zoodochos Pigis and Strefi hill, I have seen the 20th century in various versions from the 1900s to 1990-2000. I singled out those houses of the period 1920-1935 that gave so many charming examples, and lingered for a long time in front of the one-story mansion at 6 Agatiou and Daponte Streets. to that fabulous house at number 14 Charalambi with an indication that he was the architect Kostas Biri, with a year of construction in 1932.

However, I was worried about this connection of the two halves of the twentieth century. Like, that is, 1910 and 1925 talk to 1955 and 1970. I could see that this great osmosis was coming, which for future generations would almost be taken for granted as the time crossings created by World War II would disappear. There is an invisible heritage of Athens, and I saw it perfectly (although not preserved) on the streets between Charilaou Trikoupi and Mavromichalis. The post-war modernism of the area, those porches of the 1960s that fully meet the international love for mid-20th century modernism. I was happy when I saw two of these entrances side by side at 19 and 21 Kallidromiou Street. The identity of Athens is expanding.