Athens, the capital of Greece and one of Europe’s oldest, continually inhabited cities, is getting ready to host its second Olympic Games in 2004. As was the case with the first games (1896), this grand old dame of Europe is being dug up, painted, re-appointed, and “groomed” to welcome the world once again.

From her classical zenith to her Byzantine nadir to today’s multilingual and cultural markets, she has kept her heart on her sleeve—Athens can only be known and enjoyed on her streets. It is in her public places that she came to life or fallen silent, experienced glory or defeat,  and “tried out” (ekane prova) her many different “looks.”

One such public experiment was the building of the Athens Metro (Attico Metro).  It took forever to complete – one cannot just “dig” beneath Athens without running into one of its previous lives – classical, Byzantine, medieval – and without unearthing neighborhoods, cemeteries, schools, art, skeletons and other remnants of more than 6,000 years of history. 

At first Athenians were opposed to the Metro, even as an idea. But as the years passed, they became more adept at surviving the obstacle course that the downtown became with street after street and square after square boarded up behind signs announcing “Metro Construction.”  Time might not heal wounds, but it does soften the heart to the inevitable: Athenians even affectionately nicknamed the huge tunnel auguring machine the metropontika (“the big metro rat”) – and what the metropontika unearthed in its travels beneath the streets became part of urban legend and a favored coffee shop topic.

When the Metro finally opened its doors to the public last year, with two new lines and 14 stations criss-crossing Athens, its managers invited the public to ride for free.  Athenians by the hundreds of thousands descended on the city’s underground and fell in love with what they saw. They loved its speed and efficiency, but most of all they loved the exhibits at its stations: Acropolis, Syntagma, Panepistemio. The ministries and public works departments had brilliantly set up mini-museums in each station exhibiting the archaeological finds from tunneling beneath the city.

Buoyed by the public’s positive response and throngs of visitors, they became more provocative and innovative in their curating decisions: at first they mixed ancient finds with modern art (Evangelismos Station); later they invited contemporary artists like Dimitris Mytaras to narrate ancient stories in modern media (Dafni Station). Increasingly they are making the Attico Metro a showcase of contemporary Greek art, compelling commuters to be exposed to art that they might not have seen unless they were members of the art world and participate in critical dialogues about their country and its art. Now one can not only move across the city in minutes, but also enjoy the work of major contemporary artists, such as Yiannis Gaitis, Costas Tsoklis, Nikos Kessanlis, Takis, Alecos Fassianos, Pavlos and Yiannis Moralis, among many others.

The next time you are in Athens, get a day pass (less than $3), let loose and feast your eyes on the phantasmagoria of color at the Metro stations!

The photos here are of Yiannis Gaitis’ (1923–1984) work exhibited at the Larissa Station.  Gaitis is one of Athenians most loved artists. He documented and commented on the unchecked urbanization and packaging of Athens for mass tourism, using “humanoids” – pared-down symbols of urban dwellers – as his main instrument of commentary on the lost natural environment. When his audience did not quite get his message, Gaitis started including “chairs” in his installations, a reminder that there is still time to take a break and contemplate the social changes!

The Art Exchange invites you to explore contemporary Greece through its visual arts, a facet of Greece rarely known to its millions of visitors. Almost all are familiar with the country’s classical landmarks but few have come to know Greece as a modern European nation, a nation constantly inventing itself, at times borrowing from its past, and at others trying to catch up with artistic trends in the rest of the world. Our journeys focus on taking travelers beyond the expected, and introducing them to the art, places and people that define and shape Greek culture.