The ancient Greek temples and their landscapes
Since 1987 a huge, mournfully flapping and increasingly mouldy tent has covered the monument while complex restoration work is carried out.
Seeing the temple in this state on a cold March morning, nearly 40 years after being stunned by its bare, rugged magnificence, was the most shocking moment of a nostalgic trip to the Peloponnese with an old friend to revisit sites we had last inspected as schoolboy classicists. The venerable building seemed like a patient on life-support.
....everything was changed by the tent, interrupting the relationship with the landscape and the way the sanctuary emerges from it. You could not help feeling the shrouded, melancholy-looking temple was an emblem of the whole beleaguered country.
...How about this idea: European nations, in a gesture of goodwill, get together in providing a fund to hasten the works and ensure the speedy removal of the tent?
We have seen wonderful success with protected archeological sites in this country. But, we can do better.
Seeing the temple in this state on a cold March morning, nearly 40 years after being stunned by its bare, rugged magnificence, was the most shocking moment of a nostalgic trip to the Peloponnese with an old friend to revisit sites we had last inspected as schoolboy classicists. The venerable building seemed like a patient on life-support.
....everything was changed by the tent, interrupting the relationship with the landscape and the way the sanctuary emerges from it. You could not help feeling the shrouded, melancholy-looking temple was an emblem of the whole beleaguered country.
...How about this idea: European nations, in a gesture of goodwill, get together in providing a fund to hasten the works and ensure the speedy removal of the tent?
Before 1987
After 1987
The article by the British journalist and author above was the first time I heard someone mentioning the 'removal of the tent'. Something so fucking obvious!
Is there no landscape consciousness in this country?
But its not the only case. The Archeological Service and Hellenic Minitry of Culture seems to have forgotten a monument's tie with the landscape.
Enter the Parthenon! This amazing building, probably one of the five or so wonders of the global archeological monuments of all time...is permanently “scarred” by the presence of scaffolding since the early 1980s. No end in site. No reference to bringing the glory of the building and its landscape back. Very sad.
Before 1983
Recent years
We who teach and promote landscape appreciation in Greece would like to help.
Photos in this post are from internet sources; I appreciate their contribution. The last landscape photo from the hill of Pnyx with the view of the Acropolis of Athens is from College Year in Athens (CYA). https://cyathens.org/
