Tue Jun 01 2021

Athens as a collection of villagers, refugees and outsiders. Few Athenians are so-called ‘True Athenians.’ Author and journalist Diane Shugart walks Sofka around the changing neighbourhood of Pangrati to discuss this, the ‘15-minute city’ and why the kiosk or periptero is so significant. Anthropologist Roxane Caftanzoglou reveals how Anafiotika, under the Acropolis, was built by islanders from Anafi. Refugees are nothing new in Athens. Historian Nikos Nikolaides unpacks the traumas of the Greek refugees fleeing Turkey in the 1922 ‘Catastrophe.’ From Armenians in Neos Kosmos to Syrians in Kypseli, where Marina Liakis discusses how she started the NGO Zaa’tar with its refuge and falafel café, Tastes of Damascus. At the Victoria Square Project there are community arts projects for all. Young director Niovi Zarambouka-Chatzimanou says, ‘We do not talk about refugees and migrants inside our space; we talk about neighbours.’