The Acropolis hill saw its first inhabitant during the Neolithic period. The rock offers a great position with a great visibility towards land and sea, and was therefore early used as a military fortress. IN 1400 B.C., Athens became a Mycenaean city, prospered and evolved into a religious centre dedicated to the goddess Athena.
A dark age followed in which Greece remained from the 12th century B.C till the 8th. We do not have much information about this period. Athens emerged nevertheless economically reinforced from these centuries but also having lost the control of the area of Attica, now divided into minor kingdoms. Athens regained the power over Attica in the 7th century, and became the cultural and artistic centre of the country.
For a century the city was ruled by generals and aristocrats. The hierarchy depended on the wealth of the citizen, which meant that poor people had no rights and slavery was a commodity. Solon, a poet and law giver, was the one who started the path to democracy and abolished injustice towards the less fortunate by declaring all Athenians (besides slaves) equal by law and abolishing any inherited title and privilege. |
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city in economical, cultural and political areas with the Democracy of Pericles. This period is regarded as the golden age of Athens, and it is then that the Parthenon was built, and all the theatrical masterpieces were written.
The golden of age of Athens was stopped after a defeat against Sparta during the Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C). Athens then fell under the rule of Phillip of Macedon and his son Alexander the Great but remained nevertheless the cultural centre of Greece. The next threat came from the Romans, whose empire was now ruling the Western Mediterranean and slowly moving east. After several attacks they finally defeated the Macedonians.
Athens did not suffer a lot from the Roman occupation since it was a city admired and respected for her culture, her arts, her philosophy and literature, hence the Pax Romana that was established. Peace lasted until the 3rd century Greece was invaded by the Goths. While Christianity was spreading across the Empire, St Paul came to Greece in 51 A.D. to preach his famous “sermon on an Unknown God”.
The Emperor Constantine I moved the capital of the Roman Empire from Rome to Byzantium in 324 A.D. and named it Constantinople. The Roman Empire finally was divided in two parts: the Roman Empire at the west and the Byzantine Empire at the east. As it happens with all empires, and after years of power and wealth, the Roman Empire started its downfall, ceding its power to Byzantium. |
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Greek Independence of 1821, the city of Athens crossed a period of reorganisation under the rule of the foreigner King Otto, the first monarch of the new nation, and his architects and ministers,
Athens today has experienced a huge growth in population and industry.
The capital of Greece houses one third of the entire country’s population (“3.7 million inhabitants).
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