Athens

The Gift

Athens  is the capital and largest city of Greece, dominates the Attica periphery; as one of the world's oldest cities, its recorded history spans around 3,400 years.

The Greek capital has a population of 745,514 (in 2001) within its administrative limits and a land area of 39 km² (15 sq mi). The urban area of Athens extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3,130,841 (in 2001) and a land area of 412 km² (159 sq mi). According to Eurostat, the Athens Larger Urban Zone (LUZ) is the 7th most populous LUZ in the European Union (the 4th most populous capital city of the EU) with a population of 4,013,368 (in 2004).

A cosmopolitan metropolis, modern Athens is central to economic, financial, industrial, political and cultural life in Greece and it is rated as an alpha- world city. In 2008, Athens was ranked the world's 32nd richest city by purchasing power  and the 25th most expensive in a UBS study.

Classical Athens was a powerful city-state. A centre for the arts, learning and philosophy, home of Plato's Academy and Aristotle's Lyceum, it is widely referred to as the cradle of Western civilization and the birthplace of democracy, largely due to the impact of its cultural and political achievements during the 5th and 4th centuries BC on the rest of the then known European continent.

The heritage of the classical era is still evident in the city, represented by a number of ancient monuments and works of art, the most famous of all being the Parthenon, widely considered a key landmark of early Western civilization. The city also retains a vast variety of Roman and Byzantine monuments, as well as a smaller number of remaining Ottoman monuments projecting the city's long history across the centuries. Athens is home to two UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the Acropolis of Athens and the medieval Daphni Monastery. Landmarks of the modern era, dating back to the establishment of Athens as the capital of the independent Greek state in 1830, include the Hellenic Parliament (19th century) and the Athens Trilogy consisting of the National Library of Greece, the Athens University and the Academy of Athens. Athens was the host city of the first modern-day Olympic Games in 1896, and 108 years later it welcomed home the 2004 Summer Olympics. Athens is home to the National Archeological Museum, featuring the world's largest collection of ancient Greek antiquities, as well as the new Acropolis Museum.

Athens sprawls across the central plain of Attica that is often referred to as the Attica or Athens Basin. The basin is bound by four large mountains; Mount Aegaleo to the west, Mount Parnitha to the north, Mount Penteli to the northeast and Mount Hymettus to the east of the Athens Metropolitan Area and also the extension of the Athens basin is the Thriasian plain west of the capital. The Saronic Gulf lies in the southwest. Mount Parnitha is the tallest of the four mountains (1,413 m (4,636 ft)) and it has been declared a national park.

Athens is built around a number of hills. Lycabettus is one of the tallest hills of the city proper and provides a view of the entire Attica Basin. The geomorphology of Athens is deemed to be one of the most complex in the world due to its mountains and causes a temperature inversion phenomenon which, along with the failure of the Greek Government to control industrial pollution, is responsible for the air pollution problems the city has recently faced. (Los Angeles and Mexico City also suffer with similar geomorphology inversion problems).

Athens has a Subtropical Mediterranean climate (Köppen climate classification Csa) while the southern Athens area experiences a hot Semi-arid climate (Köppen climate classification BSh), with extremely long periods of sunshine throughout the year (2884 hours of sunshine per year at Thision meteorological station 1961-1990) and with the greatest amounts of precipitation mainly occurring from mid-October to mid-April; any precipitation is sparse during summer and it generally takes the form of showers and/or thunderstorms. Due to its location in a rain shadow because of Mount Parnitha, the Athenian climate is much drier compared to most of the rest of Mediterranean Europe. The mountainous northern suburbs, for their part, experience a somewhat differentiated climatic pattern, with generally lower temperatures. Fog is highly unusual in the city centre but it is more frequent to the east, behind the Hymettus mountain range.

Winter is mild, with a January average of 8.9 °C (48.0 °F); in Nea Filadeflia and 10.3 °C (50.5 °F) in Hellenikon; Snowfalls are not common and these do not normally lead to significant, if any, disruption. Nonetheless, the city has experienced heavy snowfalls in the past decade. During the blizzards of March 1987; February 1992; 4–6 January 2002; 12–13 February 2004; January 2006; and 16–18 February 2008, snow blanketed large parts of the metropolitan area, causing havoc across much of the city.

Spring and fall (autumn) are considered ideal seasons for sightseeing and all kinds of outdoor activities.

Summers can be particularly hot and at times prone to smog and pollution related conditions (however, much less so than in the past). According to the National Observatory of Athens the average daytime maximum temperature in Thision (period 2001-2009) for the month of July is 35.1 °C (95.2 °F)

Athens is notorious for its heatwaves occurring generally during the months of July and/or August, when hot air masses sweep across Greece from the south or the southwest. On such days temperatures soar over 38 °C (100 °F).