Taki Taki

I love Greece and the Greeks but they have destroyed Athens

It’s wonderful to be back under the Attic sun but much of this city is now one long cement block after another

The way it was: much of old Athens has been destroyed but the beautiful tiny district of Anafiotika above Plaka and underneath the Acropolis remains. Credit: LOUISA GOULIAMAKI/AFP via Getty Images
Athens

This ancient city without tourists reminds me of the Athens I once knew and loved, but for the hideous 1960s modern buildings that have defaced its beauty like plastic surgery gone wrong. Walking around the Old Royal Palace and the National Gardens I point out some old beauties to the wife on Herod Atticus and King George II streets. They are the chic addresses of friends, now mostly gone forever, and I include number 13 Herod Atticus, where in six weeks the greatest classic since the Iliad was written by the famous scholar Taki back in 1974. (My publisher and dear friend Tom Stacey made close to a billion from it, and built numerous Xanadus the world over, each palace containing ten floors, each floor ten beauties.)

Now I feel like Harry Thaw, the millionaire nut who murdered the most famous architect of the time, Stanford White, correctly suspecting that White was the lover of Madame Thaw, better known as Evelyn Nesbit. (Our very own Dame Joan Collins played la Nesbit on screen.) Thaw was let out after a couple of years because the doctors ruled he was momentarily bonkers, and when he arrived in Palm Beach, where his mother was waiting for him at the station, he looked around and exclaimed: ‘My God, I shot the wrong architect.’

If I ever wish Greeks dead, which is almost never, it is when I see the horrors they put up in place of the classics that had been erected by the Germans of the 19th century. Other than the Plaka underneath the Acropolis, the Palace area I just mentioned, and certain houses in nearby Kolonaki, the rest of the city is one long cement block after another, stuffed to the gills with humanity.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in