Athens

Athens is the capital of modern Greece. The city is located in the southern part of the country. It was the capital of Attica, and the chief city of ancient Greece, at once the brain and the heart of it. It was a flourishing city state in ancient Greece which was the resort of all the able and wise men, particularly in the domain of literature and art, from all parts of the country and lands beyond. Even in the 5th century BC, it was an important cultural centre. It fell to the Roman in 146 BC, and to the Goths in AD 267. Its status declined to that of a village after the Turks captured it in 1456, but regained the former status when chosen as the capital of a newly independent Greece in 1834. It again became the seat of the government, and the residence of the king.

It is said, if Greece is the cradle of democracy, Athens is its bed. It is in this city where Athenian constitution evolved in the 5th century BC which ultimately became the cornerstone of the most complete democracy of Greece. This Athen also known as Athinai, the most important city of the the ancient Greece has now become a most modern bustling capital of this country. This city is located in the Attic plain, about 5 kilometres at its nearest point from Aegean Sea, is under the shadow of Acropolis that houses Parthenon, the main temple of the ancient Athenians. Greater Athens, in fact, is the cultural, religious and economic centre of the country. Greater Athens include port Piraeus and other nearby cities.

The monuments of temple and statue that still adorn it give evidence of a culture among the citizens such as the inhabitants of no other city of the world have had the genius to surpass. Perhaps for this reason the name Athens has been adopted by or applied to several cities, Edinburgh in particular, that have been considered to rival it in this respect, and is the name of over twenty places in the United States including a city in southeastern Ohio. One of the city of this name is also in northeastern Georgia.

The two chief monuments of the architecture of ancient Athens, both erected on the Acropolis, are the Parthenon, dedicated to Athena, the finest building on the finest site in the world, and the Erechtheum, a temple dedicated to Poseidon close by.