The Olympic Aftermath in Athens

This piece from Domus goes on a tour of Athens with local architect Andreas Angelidakis, who reflects on the city's lasting and negative impacts from hosting the Olympics.

1 minute read

June 14, 2011, 5:00 AM PDT

By Nate Berg


The city was left with deep debt and many physical event venues that have been unable to stay in use.

"Angelidakis adds "this is exactly what I wanted to talk about, what the Olympic Games left the city." This takes us to the second stop on our journey after steering our way through deafening and nightmare traffic for about 20 minutes. We come to the port of Faliron Delta, the only area inside the walls of Ancient Athens that gave access to the port. Here, towering above crumbling, abandoned and overgrown buildings is a stadium, also abandoned but as colossal as the Stade de France and designed for beach volleyball.

'Beach volleyball? Why on earth build a concrete stadium for beach volleyball?' Andreas asks me, 'Do you see the need? These megastructures are closed and abandoned; they can't even be used for concerts or anything else so they are orphans of the city, dead. If they were, at least, open to the public they could become the modern ruins of Athens, at least people could visit them.'"

Monday, June 13, 2011 in domus

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