The birthplace of Western Civilization and of the first democracy, Athens' legacy precedes its current state. It was because of this reputation that it was chosen as the capital of the new Greek state in 1834, despite its then-tiny size.

In the following years, aggressive expansion, industrialization, and the admittance of hundreds of thousands of new arrivals after the Turkish war turned Athens from a sleepy backwater into the largest city of the Balkans. However, its fortunes turned sour when the hungry gaze of the Italian Empire turned on Greece.

Athens now sprawls forth from the desecrated Acropolis, a tangle of districts and suburbs extending to the Mediterranean and the sizable Port of Piraeus. However, beneath the veneer of stability that the government desperately maintains, unrest brews, and a reckoning approaches...