The Acropolis of Athens is a fair test of our commitment to humankind’s higher cultural aspirations. In ordinary times, Athenians have ten thousand good excuses to postpone the Acropolis until next month or next lifetime. These are not ordinary times. For an able-bodied resident of Athens not to take advantage of this opportunity is to fa...
Read morePM Mitsotakis announced that the Greek tourist season opens its doors on June 15 and that its well-earned “passport” of safety, reliability and health will ensure that tourists come back to Greece for a spot under the sun. Greece’s 2020 tourism season might have begun late but will offer a safe escape for tourists headed here....
Read moreEditions Assouline's dreamy coffee table books often are as attractive as the destinations they cover. Its latest addition, the Athens Riviera coffee table book is a stunning photo album that retraces the history and spirit of Athens and its inhabitants. Discover a city that we have known for millennia, but whose contemporaneity is too of...
Read moreJeff Siger has called Greece home for 35 years. Spending his lockdown in pastoral New Jersey with a grizzly-size black bear who drops in occasionally, he has been plotting his next mystery thriller set on a Greek isle. The emotions that run through this column starkly contrast with the hope he expresses in his first corona chronicle. [...
Read moreAs Greece takes its first baby steps towards re-opening its economy and welcoming a new stream of summer tourists, the mantra of “lives matter” is clearly guiding its public policy, observes Dr. Constantine Passaris of the University of New Brunswick. It is defining a new normal, grounded in scientific evidence, that has the health and we...
Read moreWhen his award-winning restaurant Pied à Terre in London's tony Fitzrovia neighbourhood closed temporarily for the lockdown, Michelin chef Asimakis Chaniotis has been in Athens with his family and has been tantalising his legion of Instagram followers with his ostensibly easy, masterfully-crafted dishes. He speaks to Elena Panayides on ex...
Read moreYannis Zervos is probably Athens' most colourful, entertaining story-teller, traversing continents and characters in his engaging prose. In Passage to Paradise, Hellenic Sketches of the Mind, so named for the delightfully appointed house and garden he grew up in, Zervos paints a vivid picture of life in post-war Greece and the incredibly ...
Read moreA terrific accessory to mask your personality or reflect it in all its glory? With masks recommended for the foreseeable future, it is time you defined your masked persona. From sophisticated in silk, to drab and utilitarian or downright silly – masks are defining our post-corona personalities in more ways than you think. Do you colour-co...
Read moreWhat do you get when a former diplomat reinvents himself as a bicycle-riding Indiana Jones and shares his contagious curiosity for Greece's ancient landscape? Brady Kiesling's restless years of scouring Greece's hillsides and ancient manuscripts is now a friendly app for the curious at heart. By arming visitors with ToposText, he hopes to...
Read morePeter Poulos, Executive Director at The Hellenic Initiative harnesses his solitude in lockdown to raise funds for those hardest hit by the Covid pandemic. Over a month ago on March 23rd Athens went into a lockdown/quarantine which required each of us to notify the government with an SMS message when we needed to leave our home...
Read moreWHAT: With the theme "Museums for Equality: Diversity and Inclusion", International Museum Day 2020 focus on the potential of museums to create meaningful experiences for peoples of all origins and backgrounds is central to their social value. Following lockdowns, International Museum Day 2020 is going digital! The Benaki Museum takes part with ...
Read moreThere’s a palpable change in the Spring air, and it’s not just the scent of budding thyme leaves being warmed by the sun. A new genre of the novel has arrived as a rebuke to the ceaseless grim tidings all around us – political, economic and environmental: and it’s called “Up lit”. Readers, it seems, are now voting for life-affirming stori...
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