Dionysos Areopagitou 17

Yesterday afternoon as we strolled along Dionysos Areopagitou on the south side of the Acropolis we were recalling the first time we walked along there in 1998. It was a busy main street open to traffic and a horror to try and cross. Now it is a wide pedestrian boulevard with treed slopes and marble stairs giving entrance to the site. The south side of the street is lined with stylish row houses - including the Embassy of Spain - many in Art Deco or Neo-Classical style. With the building of the new Acropolis Museum the Greek Government has delisted two of these buildings - Number 17 and 19 - and are set to demolish them. They block the view from the Museum terraces (and more importantly the new restaurant) to the eponymous site.I am no expert of architecture but I think Number 17 is an incredible example of Art Deco, one of the loveliest I've seen. And though the style of the facade is Deco the features are pure Athenian - symmetrical coloured marble panels, two caryatids supporting and lighting the entrance way and two mythological mosaics at the roof line. They are a perfect early 20th century interpretation of Classic Greek design.
There has been an effort on an International level to save these houses that, though not as venerable as their neighbour across the street, still are a piece of Athenian history. Unfortunately our Greek is almost - okay completely - non-existent so we could not tell from the information posted on the door if the preservation campaign has had any success.

As interesting as the new museum is - and I'll be writing more about it tomorrow - it would be a shame to see this lovely building destroyed for the sake of a dining room view.

27 novembre - San Primitivo

Details

After a while we all becomes somewhat jaded to our surroundings. Even in Rome the monuments, baroque facaded churches and the 18th century palazzi become common place. For the first year here I was constantly stopping to look at details and features on buildings and taking pictures. Often locals would stare and glance up to see what was fascinating me and shake their heads - what is the stranero finding so interesting in that old building. I'd found lately that, like them, I was paying less and less attention to my surroundings.

When my friends Ron and Gord where here last month they were continually drawing my attention to the details and colours on the buildings in my area. At first I was doing the jaded ex-pat stifled yawn routine but I find I'm back to spying the weird and wonderful details that make this city so fascinating. The intriguing combinations of colour that just wouldn't work in other places - the plaster casts of creatures great and small, real and imagined that adorn buildings; sometimes discretely, sometimes in a riot of excess.

The view directly out my office window is pretty uninspiring - a blank terra cotta coloured wall and some gutter pipes. But if I stand at the window and look slightly to the right I look down a small street with two late 19th century buildings on either side. Nothing special but charming in their way and typical of the area.

If I look to the left again it is more reddish wall broken up by brown shuttered windows. Again nothing inspiring but on Thursday I notice that it is topped with a detail that is only visible from the back of our building. A click on the picture will give you a close-up.
I've been wondering why anyone would bother adding this bit of intricate iron work to the roof line when it can't really be seen. Laurent has suggested that perhaps there is a terrace and its visible to the rooftop dwellers. If that's the case, hopefully they still notice it.

16 novembre - Santa Gertrude, detta la Grande