Is it true that the city of Athens didn’t exist 200 years ago? Did Athens live in the early 1800s? That seems like a strange question. I suppose most Greeks and Athenian would presumably agree that it did.
still, it may not be such a strange question after all grounded on certain published commentary by trippers to Athens during that time period, an period when Athens was ruled by a Turkish Ottoman overlord who did not lavish important attention on Greece, let alone the megacity of Athens. Grounded on those accounts, one might nicely question whether Athens actually was as a megacity. For case
“ When it was chosen as the Capital, Athens was a village of,000 occupants and Piraeus an insignificant fishing harborage ”( author unknown); and “ Athens was also( 1834) a city of 10 or,000 occupants, a total ruin with a many residences at the bottom of the Acropolis ”( author unknown).
In 1810, BaronJ.C. Hobhouse visited Athens while traveling in the company of Lord Byron. He allowed he heard their carriage motorist say that they were approaching the ‘ village, ’ rather of ‘ city ’ as they neared Athens. He also wrote “ we weren’t a little surprised, upon looking up, to see in a plain at a great distance before us, a large city rising round an eminence, on which we could also discern some structures, and beyond this city, the ocean ”(J.C. Hobhouse, A trip through Albania and other businesses of Turkey in Europe and Asia, to Constantinople, during the times 1809 and 1810.)
In fact, throughout the period of Turkish rule, Athens remained not only a megacity, but was the largest megacity in the Turkish quarter of southern landmass Greece, followed by Thebes, Livonia, Lamia, Atlanta, and Salon.
The exact number of occupants is delicate to determine, but all of the pointers suggest that the number was in the range of,000. In October 1824, an Ottoman tale of revolutionary Athens took place, according to which it had,040 occupants. In that same period, the truly major megacity of Thessaloniki had,000 occupants, while Tripoli and Parts each had around,000.
So, by norms of the time, Athens could clearly be considered to be a megacity, albeit a small one, not similar to Thessaloniki.
The descriptions of Athens after the Greek War of Independence( 1821 – 1832), however, could be taken to suggest that the megacity no longer was. In August 1832, Ludwig Ross wrote “ This isn’t the violet- culminated and notorious Athens. This is just a massive mound of debris, a shapeless argentine mass of ash and dust, from which crop a dozen or so win and cypress trees, the only effects opposing a universal desolation ”.(L. Ross, Berlin 1863, as quoted by. Polities,( Romantic Times testaments and stations in Greece from 1830- 1880).
Around the same time( 1832- 1833)J.L. Lacier, part of the expeditionary force of General Mayson, visited Athens. He wrote “ The heart tightens on arriving in Athens. New remains cover the ancient, which are buried in the earth…. Narrow, dark, muddy, erratic paths. unprintable, sooty and foul- smelling shops, with goods that would be held in disdain indeed by the traveling merchandisers at our village carnivals, and all of this girdled by a crude wall, have replaced the( classical structures)… and other monuments, who names alone have remained ”.(J.L. Lacier, Excursions end Grace dans les années 1832 et 1833.)
Georg Maurer, who arrived in Athens in 1833, noted “ Athens, which before the War of Liberation number around,000 houses, now has not indeed 300. The others have turned into a shapeless mound of jewels ”.(G. Levin Maurer, Das Griechische Volk, Heidelberg 1835.)
And Thomas Abbet- Grasset observed in October 1834 “ There’s no longer an Athens. In the place of this beautiful republic moment there spreads a seedy small city, black from bank, a silent guardian of dead monuments, with narrow and irregular pathways ”.
nonetheless, it was a megacity, though supposedly in veritably bad shape. still, as indicated in this oil of the megacity in 1845, reports of its demise were maybe inflated.
It was indeed a megacity.
