Athens, the capital of modern Hellas (Greece), treaded a discontinuous itinerary reaching over six millennia, of which the classical period of the ancient city-state has time and again inspired the collective memory of Western cities. Athens stands [Page 45]between Occident and Orient and is considered a “theatre of memory,” combining ancient and modern, original and copy, informal and postmodern, tourism and romantic traveling, and involving personalities from Gustav Flaubert and Sigmund Freud to Simone de Beauvoir and Jacques Derrida. However, between today's city of 3,187,734 inhabitants (Greater Athens 2001, 29 percent of the Greek population) or 3,761,810 if the broader Attica region is included, and the ancient city-state of the fourth century BC, there is a series of major discontinuities and interesting contrasts. As expected, ...