COMERFORD WAY: Patrick Comerford’s online journal on Anglicanism, theology, spirituality, history, architecture, travel, poetry, beach walks ... and more
The Church of Saint Titus in Iraklion … 25 August is the feast of Saint Titus and gives its name to the main shopping street in Iraklion (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
Patrick Comerford
Today is the feast of Saint Titus, the patron saint and first bishop of Crete. His feast is celebrated today [25 August] throughout the Orthodox Church. However, he was only added to the Calendar of the Western Church as late as 1854, when he was assigned to 6 February.
In 1969, the Roman Catholic Church moved his feast to 26 January so he could be linked with Saint Timothy and celebrated on the day after the feast of the Conversion of Saint Paul.
Saint Timothy and Saint Titus are named on 26 January in the calendars of many Anglican churches, including Common Worship in the Church of England, and the Episcopal Church, but not in the calendar of the Church of Ireland.
But 25 August remains the feast of Saint Titus in the Orthodox Church, and his head is the important relic in the Church of Saint Titus in Iraklion in Crete.
Saint Titus (Αγιος Τίτος) was a companion and disciple of the Apostle Paul and an early missionary. He is referred to in several of the Pauline epistles, including the Epistle to Titus, and brought a letter from Saint Paul to Corinth to collect for the poor in Jerusalem. He is believed to have been be a Greek from Antioch. Tradition says he was the first Bishop of Crete and appointed priests in every city in Crete.
The first church dedicated to Saint Titus was in the old capital Gortyn, until its destruction by earthquake and the Arab transfer of the capital of Crete from Gortyn to Chandax (Iraklion) in the year 828.
In 961, Nicephorus Phocas drove the Arabs from Crete, bringing the island back under Byzantine rule. The first Church of Saint Titus in Iraklion may have been built then, and the skull of Saint Titus, the miraculous icon of the Virgin Mesopanditissa and other sacred relics from Gortyn were moved to the new church.
The reliquary with the head of Saint Titus in the Church of Saint Titus in Iraklion (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
When Iraklion was captured by the Turks in 1669, the Venetians removed all the relics from the church and took them to Venice.
Under Turkish rule, the Church of Saint Titus was taken over by Vizier Fazil Ahmet Kiopruli, who converted it into a mosque known as the Vezir Mosque.
A major earthquake devastated the city in 1856 and totally destroyed the mosque or former church. It was rebuilt as an Ottoman mosque in 1872 by the architect Athanasios Moussis, who also designed the Orthodox Cathedral of Saint Minas.
The minaret of Saint Titus was demolished in the 1920s, when the last Muslims left Iraklion with the ‘exchange of populations’ between Greece and Turkey under the terms of the Treaty of Lausanne.
Restoration work on the church began in 1925, and it was consecrated as the Church of Saint Titus in 1926. The relics of Saint Titus remain in Venice to this day, but his skull was returned to Iraklion in 1966 and is now kept in a silver reliquary in a side chapel in the church.
25 August Street is a pedestrianised street leading down to the harbour in Iraklion (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
The Church of Saint Titus is one of the most important buildings in the centre of Iraklion. It stands on one side of Aghios Titos Square, a pretty plaza close to small cafés and bars and that faces onto 25 August Street (Οδός 25ης Αυγούστου).
The street is the elegant, main shopping street in Iraklion, connecting the port of Iraklion with Lion Square. It takes its name from this day, the feast of Saint Titus, because of events 120 years ago today on 25 August 1898 in the conflicts leading to the end of Ottoman rule in Crete and the incorporation of the island into the modern Greek state.
This street, 25 August Street, runs from the Lion Fountain or Morosini Fountain at Platía Venizélou (Venizelos Square, also known as Lion Square), the central crossroads of the city, down to the Venetian harbour and the fortress of Koules.
The Morosini Fountain in Lion Square at the top of 25 August Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
The street may have been first laid out by the Arabs in the ninth or tenth century. Ever since, it has been the main street in Iraklion, linking the city centre with the harbour.
During the Venetian period, from the 13th to the 17th century, it was called the Ruga Maistra (Main Street). Here stood the palatial mansion of the Venetian Dukes or Governors of the island, and the Venetian buildings still lining the street include the Basilica of Saint Mark and the Loggia, all close to the Church of Saint Titus.
The former Venetian loggia on 25 August Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
In Ottoman times, the street was known as Vezir Tsarsi (Βεζίρ Τσαρσί, Vizier’s Market) after the Vezir Mosque.
The street’s modern name is taken from a clash during the Cretan struggle for independence 120 years ago on 25 August 1898. On 25 August, a Christian official who had been appointed to manage the customs office in Heraklion was being escorted by British troops along the street from the harbour when they were attacked by a mob of Turkish fanatics.
The Turkish mob went on a rampage through Iraklion. On this day in 1898, about 500 Christians and 17 British soldiers were killed, along with the British Honorary Consul, Lysimachos Kalokairinos, and houses and shops lining the street were set ablaze.
In the reprisals that followed, 17 Turkish Cretans suspected as being the ringleaders were hanged, and many more were jailed. The British navy sailed into the harbour and the city was cleared of Turkish troops.
Crete became a self-governing island, with its autonomy guaranteed by the European powers. Within 15 years, the Great Powers were forced to accept the Cretan demand for the union of Crete with Greece, which was finalised in 1913.
The former Venetian Basilica of Saint Mark on 25 August Street (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
In the early 20th century, after Crete had been incorporated into the modern Greek state, 25 August Street became the most fashionable street in Iraklion. New buildings on the street provided offices for the new Greek authorities and state bodies, transforming Iraklion into a modern city and enhancing the majestic vista from the port into the heart of the city.
However, that first impression given to visitors belied the reality of life in the side streets and alleyways off the street, and many local people named it the ‘Street of Illusion’ (Οδός Πλάνης).
Today, 25 August is a paved pedestrian street, lined with the most beautiful neoclassical buildings in Iraklion. Many of the neoclassical and Venetian buildings now house banks, travel agencies, tourist shops and cafés. But the Loggia has been restored and San Marco, which also became a mosque in the Ottoman era, is now an exhibition area.
Walking down the street towards the harbour on a summer day, you can feel the cool sea breeze blowing up from the harbour and the Mediterranean. The parallel side streets and squares off 25 August Street have enticing ouzeri and tavernas. And today the street will be packed with people at procession and festivities celebrating the feast of Saint Titus.
Inside the Church of Saint Titus in Iraklion (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
This is an edited version of a blog posting first posted on 25 August 2017.
The Park Kiosk in Limerick is a nostalgic feature on city’s streetscape (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
Patrick Comerford
The local kiosk or periptero has been a thriving, lively part of economic life in cities and town throughout Greece for generations. In recent years, the kioks have gone into decline, and although I know many surviving kiosks throughout Crete and Athens, their future is in doubt and many people fear that they may became a lost feature of social and daily life in Greece.
There were some kiosks in the Dublin area until recently too. A handful of kiosks survive along the seafront in Bray, Co Wicklow. But I also remember a kiosk at a busy traffic junction in Ballsbridge and another at the corner of Adelaide Road and Leeson Street, as well as a small kiosk that operated in the summer months in Bushy Park in Terenure.
I did not realise, however, that in Limerick too kiosks were part of street life for many generations. While kiosks in Greece were originally licensed to support the families of war veterans and war widows, it is said in Limerick that the kiosks sprang up close to the location of shops where the proprietors and their families had been evicted in the 19th century.
A busy kiosk in the centre of Rethymnon in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
The last surviving example of these kiosks seems to be one on the Boherbuoy side of the People’s Park.
The People’s Park in Pery Square, Limerick, opened in 1877 in memory of Richard Russell, a prominent business figure in Victorian Limerick. The Barrington Map of the People’s Park that year shows a public pump on the site of the later kiosk, on Boherbuoy, then known as Nelson Street.
The kiosk, therefore, postdates this map, and was built sometime after the 1877.
For many generations, this kiosk was run by the O’Sullivan family. The first proprietor was William O’Sullivan and it then passed to his daughter Norah.
The kiosk was a well-known landmark in Limerick, and part of its trading success owed to its prominent and eye-catching location close to the railway station and bus station. Like other kiosks in Limerick – indeed, likes its counterparts througohut Greece – from early morning until late at night, it sold newspapers, soft drinks, cigarettes, tobacco, matches, toys, children’s comics, chewing gum, books and ice creams, and a good place to find small change for a pay phone.
The kiosk remained in the hands of the O’Sullivan family for generations. Tommy O’Sullivan was a prominent member of the Limerick Coty Club in Barrington Street. It continued to be run by his sons and daughters, Fonsie, Maureen, Eileen and Robert (Bob).
Bob O’Sullivan was the last member of his family to run the kiosk. After it closed in the late 1980s or early 1990s, the kiosk then fell into disrepair and was vandalised. There was a fear that many of the tobacco signs and name signs were being claimed by trophy hunters, and over the years the original signs were removed.
However, the signs were repaired and the kiosk was painstakingly refurbished and restored in 2007 by Limerick Civic Trust. In co-operation with Bob O’Sullivan, FÁS and Limerick City Council, it was brought back nostalgically to its original appearance, complete with the original signs, including old enamel signs for Will’s Cigarettes.
Since then, the kiosk has been a unique venue for the arts. For example, in January 2015, as part of a project by artist Mary Conroy, it became a green building promoting Limerick as an environmentally friendly and ecologically rich city.
The kiosk was a starting point to engage with Limerick’s parks and green spaces, and housed native plants, local information, imagery and a specially designed map to introduce people to the wide range of ecological habitats and special areas of conservation in Limerick.
The Park Kiosk has also been offered to artists as a venue for multidisciplinary residencies, with a new experience each month as artists presented work made specifically for this building. Some artists saw it as a studio, others as a theatre, a community centre or a shop.
Last year, it hosted a puppet and installation theatre, and been a location for producing short films incorporating shadow puppetry, music and song and children’s theatre.
The kiosk at the People’s Park remains a nostalgic feature on Limerick’s streetscape. But it seems to be the only surviving example of a Limerick kiosk.
I still wonder, though, what the future holds for kiosks throughout Greece.
The Park Kiosk, carefully restored by Limerick Civic Trust and is now available as an arts venue (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
The image of Santorini that Aldi uses on their supermarket shelves … a stark contrast with their rivals Lidl (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
Patrick Comerford
It is said that wherever Aldi goes, Lidl follows, and that wherever Lidl goes, Aldi is sure to follow.
So often I find it difficult to figure out which is which that I cannot figure out whether I am Aldied or Lidled.
But I have watched them follow each other as they open one supermarket after the other in similar venues, in Ireland, in England, and in Greece. Now I see that they are taking their shared competitive streak to the US.
The difference between the two, and the experience many of us have shared when we go shopping in these two German-based supermarkets is told by my former Irish Times colleague Mickey McConnell in The Ballad of Lidl & Aldi, recorded recently in John B Keane’s Bar in Listowel, Co Kerry:
But there is one place Aldi is not following Lidl – in their depictions of Santorini, which is unrivalled as the most photographed island in Greece and is the face of Greece to the rest of the world.
The island’s cubist white buildings, its pastel coloured doors and windows and the blue domes of its churches are the basic ingredients of picture-postcard Greece. Those blue domes complement the blue skies and blue seas that decorate so many postcards, calendars, coasters, fridge magnets and CDs that tourists bring home with them.
They are sometimes the first images that captivate potential visitors when they are dreaming about and planning a package holiday in Greece. And when those tourists return home, these calendars and posters decorate their homes as a reminder to return again.
In the rectory in Askeaton, I have a number of prints of photographs by Georges Meis, whose work in Santorini is celebrated in so many of those calendars, posters and coffee table books.
In Dublin, I have prints of two paintings by the artist Manolis Sivridakis that continue to remind me of all the sounds, sights, tastes, smells and thoughts of a sunny Sunday afternoon in Santorini almost 30 years ago.
The other ways lingering memories of a summer holiday on a Greek island holiday are brought back to life for wistful tourists include listening to those CDs – and finding Greek food on the supermarket shelves.
I have a small block of Feta cheese from Greece in the fridge in the Rectory at the moment. I say at the moment, because now that I have found it it’s not going to stay there for very long.
This is not Greek-style Feta, as you get in many supermarkets, but real Greek Feta, produced in Greece, using sheep and goat’s milk, under the Emporium brand name.
The label shows a blue domed church in Santorini, with the crater of the volcano and the blue Greek sea and sky in the background.
But there is something that makes this label very different from the labels in the Lidl Eridanous range.
Churches and domes without crosses … airbrushed images of Santorini seen recently on my kitchen shelves and in my fridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
The Eridanous range in Lidl is also packaged and marketed with those white cubist buildings and blue domes that instantly transport you back from the grey days of winter in Ireland to the blue-and-white days of summer in Greece.
Prominent in all of those packaging images – on tins, bags and cardboard packages – is the dome of the Anastasis Church, the most photographed church and the most photographed building on the island of Santorini.
The problem, though, is that Lidl airbrushed the cross from the dome of the church. I wrote a few weeks ago about how Lidl had eliminated all crosses and transformed the landscape of Santorini on its packaging, claiming it wants to remain ‘religiously neutral.’ Greek history, culture and landscape had been airbrushed away by the very people who claim they are marketing a taste of authentic Greek living.
Unlike Lidl, however, Aldi has kept the cross on the dome of the church in Santorini in its packaging and labelling of Greek food in the Emporium range.
The image of Santorini that Lidl does not want you to see on their supermarket shelves
Despite an outcry a few months ago, the Eridanous range, including Greek olive oil, honey, moussaka, honey, yogurt, gyros, butter beans and pastry swirls, remains on shelves in Lidl outlets in Ireland in their photo-shopped packaging.
And so, I now know the difference between Aldi and Lidl and the differences between their branding of Greek foods.
Maria Farantouri, the voice of Greek conscience, was born 70 years ago on 28 November 2017
Patrick Comerford
The Greek singer and political and cultural activist Maria Farantouri (Μαρία Φαραντούρη) turns 70 today (28 November 2017). I have built up a modest collection of her work over many years, buying her CDs in Crete and Athens, and her influence on Greek political and social activism is immeasurable, perhaps comparable only with the composer Mikis Theodorakis, and the two have collaborated closely throughout her career.
Her voice is a deep contralto with about an octave and a half range, and is immediately recognisable to every Greek, stirring deep emotional reactions. The international press has called her a people’s Callas (The Daily Telegraph), and the Joan Baez of the Mediterranean (Le Monde). The Guardian said her voice was a gift from the gods of Olympus.
She has worked with prominent Greek composers such as Mikis Theodorakis and Manos Hatzidakis with the Australian guitarist John Williams, she has recorded in Greek, English, Italian and Spanish, and she has recorded poems and works by international writers from Brendan Behan to Federico García Lorca.
In their collaboration, Maria Farantouri and Mikis Theodorakis have radically transformed modern Greek music and have made Greek people familiar with the poetry of the Nobel Prize-winning poets George Seferis and Odysseas Elytis and many other Greek poets.
The Irish journalist Damian Mac Con Uladh, who lives in Greece, and the Irish diplomat Patrick Sammon have painstakingly researched the story of her recording of Το Γελαστό παιδί, Mikis Theodorakis’s interpretation of Brendan Behan’s poem, with Greek lyrics translated by Vasilis Rotas for a Greek setting of the play The Hostage.
The song featured in Costas Garvas’s movie Z (1969) and became one of the emotional anthems in the resistance to the colonels’ junta in 1967-1974.
Maria Farantouri was born in Athens on 28 November 1947, when Greece was recovering in the aftermath of of World War II, and her childhood was full of hardship. Her father was from Kefalonia, and her mother from Kythira, living in the working-class suburb of Nea Ionia, which had been settled in the 1920s by refugees from Asia Minor.
At the age of two, Maria was struck by the polio epidemic sweeping across Europe, and was she was separated from her parents while she was quarantined in a children’s hospital. Her creative career began in her teens when she took part in the choir of the Society of Friends of Greek Music. She was soon recognised for her rich contralto voice, and became a soloist.
She was 15 and singing with the choir in 1963 when Mikis Theodorakis heard her singing his song Grief. He was deeply impressed, met her backstage, and asked: ‘Do you know that you were born to sing my songs?’
‘I know,’ was her immediate response.
During her school summer holiday, Maria became a member of Theodorakis’s ensemble, which included Grigoris Bithikotsis, Dora Yiannakopoulou and Soula Birbili.
Soon, she was singing at important political and social events. Theodorakis’s new work The Hostage was performed at every peace demonstration, and with her militant young voice, Maria made his Greek version of Brendan Behan’s song The Laughing Boy known throughout Greece.
Around this time, Theodorakis composed the first work he had written for her voice, The Ballad of Mauthausen (Η Μπαλάντα του Μαουτχάουζεν), a cantata based on the writings of the Greek playwright Iakovos Kambanellis (1922-2011).
This cantata would become identified with her voice throughout the world. The best-known song of all, Άσμα Ασμάτων (Asma Asmaton, ‘Song of Songs’), which opens hauntingly with the words:
Τι ωραία που είν’ η αγάπη μου
με το καθημερνό της φόρεμα
κι ένα χτενάκι στα μαλλιά.
Κανείς δεν ήξερε πως είναι τόσο ωραία.
‘My love, how beautiful she is in her everyday dress.’
That year, Maria also recorded a song by Spyros Papas and Yiannis Argyris, Someone is Celebrating, accompanied by Lakis Papas. In 1966, the soundtrack of Harilaos Papadopoulos’s movie Island of Aphrodite was released with music by Theodorakis. This included Maria’s first recording of Theodorakis, Blood-stained Moon, a setting of a poem by Nikos Gatsos.
Theodorakis wrote six more songs for her voice, naming them Farandouri’s Cycle in a tribute to the young artist who would become his major interpreter. Although he has written many other songs for male and female voices, she remains the only artist to whom he has dedicated a song cycle.
She toured Greece and abroad as a member of Theodorakis’s ensemble, and visited the Soviet Union in 1966.
In the military coup in 1967, the colonels’ junta to power in Greece, and the new regime banned Theodorakis’s music. He went underground, and during his four months on the run sent a short message to Maria on chewing-gum wrapping paper advising her to flee Greece.
She was just 20 when she went into exile in Paris. There she started singing in concerts, with the takings going to movements working to overthrow the colonels. She became a symbol of resistance and hope, and also took an active part in the women’s movement, in ecological activism and the struggle against drugs.
While the colonels remained in power (1967-1974), Maria worked throughout Europe, recording protest songs with Mikis Theodorakis, who wrote the score for Pablo Neruda’s Canto General.
In 1971, she recorded Songs and Guitar Pieces by Theodorakis with the Australian guitarist John Williams, which included seven poems by Federico García Lorca. Since then, she has recorded songs in Spanish (Hasta Siempre Comandante Che Guevara), Italian and English (Joe Hill and Elisabeth Hauptmann’s Alabama Song, from Bertolt Brecht’s political-satirical opera Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, as well as works by Greek composers.
Her recording and concerts in Europe and America, broadcast by the BBC and Deutsche Welle, kept alive the music of Theodorakis. The composer was in internal exile in the remote mountain village of Zatouna, and he secretly supplied her with tapes of his new songs which he recorded crudely on a small tape-recorder. They were then smuggled to her, and she organised musical arrangements for his songs, playing them on the piano and singing them himself.
These included State of Siege, his setting of a poem by a woman prisoner, broadcast from London’s Roundhouse. In this concert, Maria was supported by Greek artists such as Minos Volanakis, and actors from the musical Hair, who rushed from their show during an interval to support her. Sir John Gielgud, Alan Bates and Peggy Ashcroft also supported a later concert by Maria at the Albert Hall.
She met Tilemachos Chytiris, a poet from Corfu and a student of philosophy at Florence, while she was giving a concert at the invitation of Greek students.
In 1970, international artists and writers intervened on behalf of Theodorakis, whose health had deteriorated. With the support of the French politician Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber he too went into exile in Paris. When his health began to recover, Theodorakis began his tours of Europe, North and South America, and the Middle East, with Maria playing a leading part in his concerts.
Meanwhile, Maria also began collaborating with the composer Manos Hadzidakis, who was then working on The Age of Melissanthi, and subtitled his new composition A Musical Story with Maria Farantouri, although this work was not finished for some years. His intervention allowed Maria to return to Greece in 1972 to say farewell to her father who died that year. The military junta gave her a 48-hour visa, and during these two days she visited the ancient theatre of Epidaurus.
Her packed concerts encouraged and emboldened Greeks in exile, and recordings were smuggled back into Greece, giving courage to those who were struggling against the junta.
By the early 1970s, she was living in exile in London. There in 1971 she and the Australian guitar virtuoso John Williams recorded Theodorakis’s Romancero Gitano, a setting of poems by Federico Garcia Lorca translated by the Greek poet Odysseus Elytis. Lorca was a victim of Spanish fascism and Theodorakis had set his poetry to music just before the colonels’ coup.
In Paris, Maria made such an impression on François Mitterrand that in his book The Bee and the Architect he compared her to Greece itself: ‘For me, Greece is Maria Farantouri. This is how I imagined the goddess Hera to be, strong, pure, and vigilant. I have never encountered any other artist able to give such a strong sense of the divine.’
Maria Farantouri in a memorable performance of the song at the first concert given by Mikis Theodorakis in Greece after the fall of the dictatorship in 1974
When the Greek junta sent in tanks against protesting students in Athens on 17 November 1973, causing the deaths of at least 24 people over a number of days, Maria Farandouri added a couple of stanzas to the song Το Γελαστό παιδί, deliberately linking it to that event.
After the dictatorship fell in 1974, Mikis Theodorakis and Maria Farandouri returned to Greece. There they gave moving concerts to audiences who had experienced seven years of fear and repression, and at a concert by Theodorakis in Athens in October to mark the fall of the junta and the restoration of democracy she sang that new version of that song.
As Damian Mac Con Uladh points out, While Brendan Behan's original ‘laughing boy,’ Michael Collins, was killed ‘on an August morning,’ Maria’s extra lines referred to ‘November 17,’ and instead of saying the laughing boy was killed by ‘our own,’ the Polytechnic version refers to the killers as ‘fascists.’
About 125,000 people attended her performance with the baritone Petros Pandis of Theodorakis’s Canto General in the Karaiskakis Stadium. Her Songs of Protest from all over the World in Greek became a gold record.
She was the first foreign artist to be accepted by German audiences as an interpreter of Berthold Brecht in a language other than German, and she inspired many foreign artists who sang her songs, giving them their own interpretation.
Maria also renewed her collaboration with the Greek song-writer Manos Loizos, recording an album that characterised that era, The Negro Songs, based on poems by Yiannis Negrepontis. She worked too with Mihalis Grigoriou, who set the poetry of Manolis Anagnostakis to music.
Her collaboration with Hadzidakis was revived when he completed Mellissanthi and wrote new songs for her. Their concerts in the Roman Agora in Athens with younger singers became the musical event of the season.
With her longing for peace and friendship between Greece and Turkey, Maria took the daring step of collaborating with the Turkish composer Zülfü Livaneli. They staged concerts in Athens and for Turkish audiences.
In 1981, she travelled again with Theodorakis to Cuba, and Fidel Castro was so impressed that he invited to the Greeks back for a new series of concerts the following year.
Maria and Tilemachos Chytiris began a new chapter in life when their son Stefanos was born on 28 October 1985, Oxi Day or Greek National Independence Day. For a time, she withdrew from all artistic engagements and only worked rarely and selectively.
Her most important collaboration was The Ballad of Mauthausen in the Herod Atticus Theatre in Athens with the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Zubin Mehta. Later, she would work with him again in Paris to mark the Millennium under the auspices of UNESCO
In 1987, she performed Romancero Gitano in Fuente Vaqueros in the house where Lorca was born, with the poet’s sister and his friend Jose Caballero present.
The political situation in Greece became unstable in Greece in 1989. The Prime Minister, Andreas Papandreou, leader of Pasok, the Socialist Party, was under attack, election after election failed to produce a stable government, and in response to Papandreou’s invitation, Maria stood as a Pasok candidate. From the opposition benches, she worked on cultural issues with Melina Mercouri and Stavros Benos.
She remained an elected member of the Greek parliament until 1993, and her husband Tilemachos Chytiris is a Pasok politician too. He had worked as press adviser in the Greek Embassy in Bucharest (1982-1984) and in London (1984-1987). From 1987 to 1989 he was special Secretary at the Ministry for the Presidency of the Government. In 1989, Papandreou appointed him as his media spokesman.
Tilemachos Chytiris was elected in an Athens constituency in 1993 and was re-elected in every election until 2009. He was a deputy minister in 1993-1994 and deputy minister for the Press and the Media (1994-1995). I met him when he was Press Minister (1995-1996). Chytiris was Deputy Press Minister (2000-2009) in the third cabinet of Costas Simitis, and also served in of George Papandreou’s cabinet until 2011.
Meanwhile, Maria returned to singing and recording in 1990, when she worked with the Cuban composer Leo Brouwer on a double album that included songs written for her by the Greek composer Vangelis (Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou).
She has continued to work with Theodorakis to this day, and also works with a new generation of young Greek composers. In 2000, after years of absence, the avant-garde composer Lena Platonos returned to the recording studio, and recorded exclusively with Maria.
In August 2001, Maria filled the Theatre of Herod Atticus in Athens with a concert of ‘A Century of Greek Song.’ In June,2003, nine years after the death of Hadzidakis, once again in the Roman Odeon, she sang the completed version of his Amorgos, a setting of poems by Nikos Gatsos.
In recent years, Maria has given a new dimension to the traditional Greek rembetiko and to Byzantine music. She has reached out to international musical trends, such as ethnic music, in her recent CD Το Μυστικό (The Secret or Mosaic), when she has worked with Ross Daly, the Irish composer who lives in Archanes in Crete. She has collaborated too with classical musicians like Yannis Vakarelis.
Το γελαστό παιδί (η ελληνική απόδοση του Βασίλη Ρώτα)
Ήταν πρωί τ” Αυγούστου
κοντά στη ροδαυγή
βγήκα να πάρω αγέρα
στην ανθισμένη γή
Βλέπω μια κόρη κλαίει
σπαραχτικά θρηνεί
σπάσε καρδιά μου εχάθει
το γελαστό παιδί
Είχεν αντρειά και θάρρος
κι αιώνια θα θρηνώ
το πηδηχτό του βήμα
το γέλιο το γλυκό
Ανάθεμα στη ώρα
κατάρα στη στιγμή
σκοτώσαν οι δικοί
μας το γελαστό παιδί
Ω, να “ταν σκοτωμένο
στου αρχηγού το πλάϊ
και μόνο από βόλι
Εγγλέζου να “χε πάει
Κι απ” απεργία πείνας
μεσα στη φυλακή
θα “ταν τιμή μου που “χασα
το γελαστό παιδί
Βασιλικιά μου αγάπη
μ” αγάπη θα σε κλαίω
για το ότι έκανες
αιώνια θα το λέω
Γιατί όλους τους εχθρούς μας
θα ξέκανες εσύ
δόξα τιμή στ” αξέχαστο
το γελαστό παιδί
The laughing boy, by Brendan Behan
It was on an August morning, all in the morning hours,
I went to take the warming air all in the month of flowers,
And there I saw a maiden and heard her mournful cry,
Oh, what will mend my broken heart, I’ve lost my Laughing Boy.
So strong, so wide, so brave he was, I’ll mourn his loss too sore
When thinking that we’ll hear the laugh or springing step no more.
Ah, curse the time, and sad the loss my heart to crucify,
Than an Irish son, with a rebel gun, shot down my Laughing Boy.
Oh, had he died by Pearse’s side, or in the GPO,
Killed by an English bullet from the rifle of the foe,
Or forcibly fed while Ashe lay dead in the dungeons of Mountjoy,
I’d have cried with pride at the way he died, my own dear Laughing Boy.
Sir Edward FitzGerald Law (1846-1908) … the Philhellene who rescued the Greek economy in the 1890s
Patrick Comerford
The Irish Hellenic Society,
The United Arts Club,
Upper Fitzwilliam Street, Dublin,
7.30pm, 22 November 2017.
Οδός Λω Εδουρδου … named after Edward Law (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
The present financial crisis in Greece, the international consequences of Greek defaulting on its debts, the cycle of daily or weekly protests on the streets of Athens, Thessaloniki and other cities, and the possibility of the government – at some time – defaulting on the Greek national debt, all remind me of the story of Sir Edward FitzGerald Law (1846–1908).
Edward Law was an Irish diplomat who was involved in restructuring Greece’s finances over a century ago. But he became so passionately involved in Greece’s story, that he is still remembered and honoured in Athens today.
In researching the stories of the Irish Philhellenes who contributed to the liberation of Greece in the 19th century, I might have passed by Edward Law’s contribution to making Greece an independent, modern state, except I came across his name by accident on a number of successive occasions, including:
● researching the biographical details of his father’s cousin, the Revd Patrick Comerford Law (1797-1869);
● reading reports of a visit to Athens by his cousin, Archbishop John Fitzgerald Gregg;
● coming across his monument in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin;
● visiting the Spire restaurant in Duleek, Co Meath, housed in the former Church of Ireland parish church, and the surrounding churchyard where members of the Law family are buried;
● visiting the street in Athens that is named after him.
Family background
The Bank of Ireland … Michael Law (1795-1858) was a director (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
The Law family was of Scottish descent, and an ancestor, Michael Law, fought with King William at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. One branch of the Law family was a long-established clerical family in the Church of Ireland. Michael Law’s son, the Revd William Samuel Law, who died in 1760, was Rector of Omagh and the first of five or six generations of distinguished clergy: the Revd Robert law (1730-1789), the Revd Francis Law (1768-1807), who married Bellinda Isabella Comerford from Cork; the Revd Patrick Comerford Law (1797-1869); the Revd Francis Law (1800-1877); and the Revd Robert Arbuthnot Law (1842-1889).
Another branch of the family included successful bankers. Robert William Law, a first cousin of the Revd Patrick Comerford Law, was the father of Michael Law (1795-1858), of Castle Fish, Co Kildare. He founded the Law & Finlay Bank, and was also a Director of the Bank of Ireland. He married Sarah-Ann, daughter of Crofton Vandeleur FitzGerald of Carrigoran, near Shannon and Newmarket on Fergus, Co Clare, and they had four sons who were successful in their chosen careers.
However, poor health forced Michael Law to close his bank, and on doctor’s orders he left Ireland to live on Continental Europe, where he died while his sons were still children or in their teens: Robert Law (1836-1884) later lived in Newpark, Co Kildare; Michael Law (1840-1905) became a judge in British administered Egypt; Sir Edward FitzGerald Law (1847-1908) is the colourful adventurer who later became effectively the Finance Minister of Greece and the subject of this evening’s discussions; and Sir Archibald Fitzgerald Law (1853-1921) was a colonial judge in Malaya.
Edward FitzGerald Law was born on 2 November 1846 in Rostrevor House, Co Down, the third son among the nine children of the banker Michael Law and his wife Sarah-Ann FitzGerald.
Michael Law the banker died before Edward’s 12th birthday. His widow sent Edward to school in Brighton and St Andrew’s. Then, as an impoverished youth, Edward Fitzgerald Law secured an education at Sandhurst and entered the Royal Artillery in Woolwich Barracks in 1868. But he was son invalided home from India, and a after a brief, four-year military career Law became the British consul at St Petersburg in Russia.
Law then travelled the world as a financial diplomat, an adventurer, a journalist, a failed entrepreneur, railway pioneer, and – I am sure – a spy, working in Russia, Sudan, India, China and North America, before moving to Constantinople, and going on to work in Greece, Bulgaria and other parts of the Balkans.
He moved to Russia to work with the Wire Transport Co. He spent the next 10 years in Moscow, where he became a business agent for agricultural machinery, travelled widely as the Daily Telegraph correspondent, and spent a brief period from 1880 to 1881 as the British Consul at St Petersburg.
He returned to London, where his views on Russia were published in the Fortnightly Review. He then moved on to the Congo, and in 1885 he returned to the British army to take part in the Sudan expedition under Sir Gerald Graham. He took part in the Battle of Suakin, was decorated, and was promoted major.
After this military interlude, Law returned to his travels, visiting Manchuria, San Francisco, Japan and Vladivostok, before returning to London as manager of the United Telephone Co.
Back in London, Law vehemently opposed Gladstone’s Home Rule Bill of 1886. But he was soon travelling again, and by 1888 he was back in St Petersburg as the British Commercial and Financial Attaché to Russia, Persia and Turkey.
The move to Greece
Law first went to Greece in 1892, and presided over the finances of Greece, restructuring the Greek debt and the nation’s economy, to the lasting advantage of Greece.
The Greek treasury had been depleted by over-spending and systemic corruption often caused by political campaigns in which parties promised massive spending programmes. The reformist Prime Minister, Charilaos Trikoupis (Χαρίλαος Τρικούπης, 1832-1896), stood before parliament and made the most famous statement of his career: ‘Regretfully, we are bankrupt’ («Δυστυχώς επτωχεύσαμεν»).
In 1893, Greek taxation was moderate in comparison to many other European countries. Law suggested increasing it, along with introducing reforms in the imposition and collection of new taxes. He regarded a new loan for Greece as a necessity, but the operation was to comprise funding the floating debt, and reducing the circulation of Greek banknotes during the three following years.
Law’s own views were summarised in his covering letter with his report:
If it be held that the difficulty is solely due to unsuccessful financial administration, a further question arises are the resources of the country sufficient, with reasonable care, to meet existing difficulties, or is the financial position so compromised as to be beyond remedy without prejudice to the honour of the Greek nation and the legitimate rights of its creditors?
Law’s report was leaked in the City in London before it was published, causing considerable speculation in Greek stocks. This ‘regrettable incident’ was attacked in the London daily newspapers, and Law was subjected to some unmerited censure.
However, his report helped restore public confidence in Greece, the servicing of foreign loans was suspended, and all non-essential spending was cut. Some of the results Law might have been expected were frustrated by the untimely fall of Trikoupis and his reformist government.
Edward Law and Catherine Hatsopoulou around the time of their marriage
Law was at his happiest in Athens. At a party at the German Embassy there he met Catherine (Kaity), only daughter of Nicholas Hatsopoulos. She was the descendant of an old Byzantine family that was long-settled in Athens. Edward and Kaity were married on 18 October 1893.
Lady Law on a medallion struck for the Empress Frederika in 1894
In 1894, Kaity was the model for an image of Athens on a medallion struck for Queen Victoria’s daughter, the Empress Frederika (1840-1901), wife of Kaiser Frederick III.
Law stayed on in Greece, and in 1897 he was appointed the British member or commissioner on the International Financial Committee at Athens. He remained the British Minister Resident in Athens from 1898 to 1900.
The harbour at Chania … Edward Law used his position in Athens and in the Balkans to assist the struggle for autonomy in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Reading through Law’s papers, it appears obvious that he used his position in Athens and travelling through the Balkans to supply crucial information to the Greeks involved in the struggle for autonomy on the island of Crete. This struggle began 100 years ago in 1897 and resulted first in an autonomous Cretan state headed by Prince George of Greece in 1898, and eventual unification with Greece in 1908, the year of Law’s death.
Death in Paris
From Greece, Law was sent to India, where he was the Financial Member of the Council of the Governor-General, effectively the Indian Finance Minister, from 1900 to 1904. Law is also credited with the invention of a flying machine.
His intention was always to return to live in Greece in his retirement. When he retired in 1905, he remained a director of the Ionian Bank in Greece. But he never enjoyed good health, and he died of a heart attack at the Hotel Bellevue, in Avenue l’Opera in Paris on 2 November 1908, his 62nd birthday.
Earlier that year, his beloved Crete had achieved total unification with the modern Greek state.
Saint Paul’s Anglican Church, Philellinon Street, Athens … Law’s funeral service took place here on 21 November 1908 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
Law’s own request was to be brought back to Greece and to be buried in Athens. He was given a funeral with full military and state honours on 21 November 1908, with Crown Prince Constantine (later King Constantine I of Greece) and the entire Greek cabinet attending his funeral service in Saint Paul’s Anglican Church on Philellinon Street, between Syntagma Square and the Plaka, in Athens.
Law had been knighted in the British honours system, as a Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George (KCMG) in 1898 for his work in Greece, and as a Knight Commander of the Order of the Star of India (KCSI) in 1906. But he had refused all honours offered by the Greek monarchy and state.
Nevertheless, his coffin was covered with the Greek national flag, and he received a state funeral with all the honours reserved for someone decorated with the Grand Cross of the Saviour, an honour he had declined.
The graveside eulogy in the First Cemetery was delivered by the Finance Minister and future Prime Minister, Nikolaos Kalogeropoulos (Νικόλαος Καλογερόπουλος, 1851-1927). It was reported that ‘… when the soldiers fired the last salute over his Athenian grave, his wife knew that the desire of his life had not been denied him.’
One Greek newspaper, Neon Asti, commented: ‘… he loved Greece with the devotion of a son … he was a Greek at heart. As he felt for Greece, more than a Greek, he watched over her, advised her and warned her …’
Sir Richard Church’s house in the Plaka, beneath the slopes of the Acropolis (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
Close-by in the same cemetery is the grave of Sir Richard Church (1784-1873), the Cork-born general who commanded the Greek army throughout the Greek War of Independence. Church lived in house in the Plaka, beneath the slopes of the Acropolis, and he too was buried from Saint Paul’s Anglican Church on Philellinon Street in Athens.
Οδός Λω Εδουρδου … the street signs on the street named after Edward Law (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
A year after Law’s death, the city council agreed unanimously to name a street in central Athens after him: Edward Law Street is off Stadiou Street (Οδός Σταδíου), the major street linking Omonoia Square and Syntagma Square.
But we all encounter the difficult strangulations when English-language names are transliterated into Greek and then transliterated back into English lettering without considering the original name. So, Edward Law Street in Athens has become Οδός Λω Εδουρδου. There is no W in Greek.
Οδός Τζορτζ … named after Sir Richard Church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
In a similar way, Byron Street in the Plaka is still rendered Odos Vyronos in English lettering, while in the streets near Edward Law Street we have Church Street, named after Sir Richard Church, which is actually spelled Odos Tzortz (Οδός Τζορτζ), and we get Gladstonos for Gladstone, while Canning has become Kaningos.
The tablet in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, commemorating Sir Edward Law (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
There are tablets to his memory in Saint Paul’s Anglican Church, Athens, and in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin. The memorial plaque in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, reads:
To the memory of Major Sir Edward FitzGerald Law, KCSI, KCMG, late Royal Artillery, third son of Michael Law of this city and of Glenconway Co Derry. Born at Rostrevor Nov 2 1845. Died in Paris Nov 2 1908. Buried at Athens. Served in the Egyptian campaign of 1885. As Financial and Commercial Secretary, he represented his country in various negotiations in Eastern Europe, was First President of the International Commission at Athens 1897, Minister President 1898, Financial member of the Governor General’s Council in India 1900 to 1904. ‘Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord or who shall stand in his holy place. He that hath clean hands and a pure heart.’
The Biblical reference is to Psalm 24: 3. At the top of the plaque is a coat-of-arms quartering the arms of Law and FitzGerald. At the bottom is the emblem of the Royal Artillery.
The grave of Michael Augustine FitzGerald Law in Duleek, Co Meath (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
At the time of Edward Law’s death in 1908, his eldest brothers, Robert and Michael, had already died. Robert Law (1836-1884) of Newpark, Co Kildare, was the father of Michael Augustine FitzGerald Law (1861-1917), of Bearmond, Drogheda, who is buried in the old churchyard in Duleek, Co Meath, with other members of the family, including his wife Mary and their son, Major Francis Cecil Law, who died in 1958.
Law was still remembered with pride in Greece when the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Armagh, John Allen Fitzgerald Gregg (1873-1961), visited Athens 66 years ago in 1951. When the Mayor of Athens was told of the archbishop’s kinship with Law, he invited Gregg to return as the guest of the municipality. Gregg later described this as ‘an offer which I fear I cannot hope to take advantage of.’
Meanwhile, other members of the Law family are buried in the graveyard beside the ruins of Saint Mary’s Abbey and the former Church of Ireland parish church in Duleek. As I strolled through the former churchyard in fading lights one evening last year, I noticed a plot with three graves belonging to members of the Law family: Michael Augustine Fitzgerald Law (1861-1917) and his wife Mary (died 1937), Olive Law and Major Francis Cecil Law (died 1958).
The graves are beside one of the ‘short’ high cross, dating from the ninth century and one of the great high crosses of Duleek. These graves are also a reminder of the story of an Irish banker and army officer who saved the finances of Greece over a century ago and who is buried in Athens.
Drishane Castle, near Millstreet, Co Cork (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
Michael Augustine FitzGerald Law, of Bearmond, Drogheda, was the father of Captain Robert Law (1890-1973), of Rosnaree, Slane, Co Meath. I was reminded of Robert’s story earlier this summer when I was visiting Millstreet, my mother’s home village in north Co Cork.
Robert Law was brought up in Drogheda and educated at Haileybury. He was an officer with the Royal Dublin Fusiliers during World War I, and was decorated with the Military Cross.
After World War I, it is said, he shot 12 bull elephants in West Africa but was charged by the thirteenth which left him badly mauled. When he emerged from the jungle with a hoard of ivory, he claimed he had survived on a diet of bananas only.
Shortly after, he eloped with the former Audrey Beatrice Jean Wallis (1888-1961) of Drishane Castle in Millstreet, Co Cork. She left her first husband, Francis Ivan Oscar Brickmann, Robert sold Bearmond, and the couple moved to Rossnaree, near Slane and Newgrange. Audrey’s divorce came through in 1921, and they were married within weeks on 4 June 1921.
Audrey Law died on 28 October 1961. Her son, Major Michael Law (1923-1975), was the father of Robert Law (1955-2004), who married Aisling Stuart, daughter of Imogen Stuart and great-grand-daughter of Maude Gonne.
The Law family continues to live at Rosnaree, which has featured on RTÉ television as a country house wedding venue and is known for its summer art schools. The family portraits there include Sir Edward Law’s father, the banker Michael Law.
Sir Edward Fitzgerald Law’s biography by Theodore Morrison and George T. Hutchinson, The Life of Sir Edward Fitzgerald Law, was published by Blackwood in 1911.
In a chapter contributed to this book, James Louis Garvin (1868-1947), the editor of the Observer and the son of an Irish labourer, describes Law as ‘fearing no responsibility yet able to show himself … a safe and dexterous tactician, and audacious in instinct, prudent in method, and yet full of emotional strength, of passionate possibilities, and all manner of great-heartedness.’
(Revd Canon Professor) Patrick Comerford is Priest-in-Charge of the Rathkeale and Kilnaughtin Group of Parishes and Canon Precentor of Saint Mary’s Cathedral, Limerick. He is a former professor in the Church of Ireland Theological Institute and Trinity College Dublin.
The street in Athens named after Sit Edward Law (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
The ‘Church of Ireland Notes’ in ‘The Irish Times’ today includes the following paragraph:
On Wednesday … Canon Patrick Comerford is the guest lecturer of the Irish Hellenic Society in the United Arts Club, Upper Fitzwilliam Street, Dublin, at 7.30pm, when he will discuss Sir Edward Law (1846–1908): the Irish Philhellene who rescued the Greek economy in the 1890s. Law is buried in Athens and is commemorated in both a street name in the Greek capital and in a memorial plaque in St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin.
The memorial plaque in Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, commemorating Sir Edward Law (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)
Reflections of Greece in Dublin last night ... Kostas Greek restaurant at 69 Dame Street, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
Patrick Comerford
Two of us had dinner last night in Kostas, a new Greek restaurant run by Adam Kritidis at 69 Dame Street, Dublin.
As winter begins to close in Ireland, it was a welcome distraction to be reminded of Greece in summer. There was Dakos and Imam, and Florina Peppers and Imam, tastes and sounds of being back in Greece once again.
But as the evening moved from eating to talking, the conversation moved from romance to reality, and the real consequences of the continuing economic crisis for Greeks who are bearing the burden of continuing austerity.
As I travelled back to the comfort of south Dublin, I was still emotionally upset. But the tenacity of Greeks, the will not only to survive but to stand up, came to mind in the words of Yiannis Ritsos’ poem, «Τη Ρωμιοσύνη μην την κλαις», published in Ποιήματα.1963-1972 (Κέδρος, Αθήνα 1989).
When Greeks use the word Romiosini, it means more than being Greek, yet it is impossible to describe in English the emotional dimensions of this word.
It conveys culture, resistance, place, tradition, dance, character, wilfulness, language, history, tradition, identity, dance and song.
It is the spirit stands up in the face of adversity, catastrophe, trauma and the tide and tempest of the world.
It is freedom and resistance, it is democracy and revolution, it is a way of being Greek but more than Greek.
And I turned again to listening to Maria Farantouri – who is 70 later this month – singing the interpretation of this poem by Mikis Theodorakis.
The original references are to resistance to the Ottoman Turks. But this became one of the songs that symbolised the resistance to the colonels’ junta, and today it sings of resistance to everyone who would try to deny the Greekness of Greeks.
Γιάννη Ρίτσου, «Τη Ρωμιοσύνη μην την κλαις»
Τη ρωμιοσύνη μην την κλαις
εκεί που πάει να σκύψει
με το σουγιά στο κόκκαλο
με το λουρί στο σβέρκο
Νά τη πετιέται απο ξαρχής
κι αντριεύει και θεριεύει
και καμακώνει το θεριό
με το καμάκι του ήλιου
This is a poor effort to translate this deeply moving and emotional poem and song:
Don’t dare cry for Greece
There where she is forced to stoop,
Stabbed by a knife in her back
Bent by a yoke on her neck.
Yet see her rise from the blow,
Grow with strength and with fury,
And see her strike back at the beast
With the harpoon of the sun.
The Acropolis at night, seen from an apartment in Monastiraki (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017; click on images for full-screen viewing)
Patrick Comerford
Although I have visited Athens countless times, and have often climbed the rock of Acropolis, I only recently visited the new, award-winning Acropolis Museum, which opened in 2009.
I was spending a weekend in Monasitraki in August in an apartment with 180-degree views of the Acropolis by day and by night. We were close to the Plaka and the main tourist, archaeological and historical sites in the centre of Athens.
The Acropolis at day, seen from an apartment in Monastiraki (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
Most of my visits to Athens in the past were working visits as a journalist. But now, with classical Athens on our doorstep, two of us decided to visit the Acropolis one morning and to take a guided tour of the New Acropolis Museum in the afternoon.
Thousands of tourists visit the Acropolis in Athens each day (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
The temples on the ‘sacred rock’ of Athens are breath-taking in scale. These are the most important monuments in the western world and they have exerted more influence on our architecture than anything built since.
The great marble masterpieces were built during the ‘Golden Age of Athens,’ during the rule of Pericles in late fifth century BC.
The three principal sites on the Acropolis are the Propylaia, the Parthenon or the Temple of Athena Nike, and the Erechtheion.
Visitors entered the Acropolis through the Propylaia (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
The Propylaia is the monumental or grand entrance through which all visitors entered the Acropolis. It was built in 437-432 BC and was designed by the Athenian architect Mnesikles.
The Parthenon or Temple of Athena Nike was built in 427-423 BC by the architect Kallikrate and under the supervision of Phidias. It replaced an earlier small temple, and is the epitome of ancient Greek classical art and architecture.
The porch of the Erechtheion was supported by pillars in the shape of the Caryatids (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
The Erechtheion is the last of the buildings dating from the time of Pericles. It was a temple to Poseidon and Athena, with a porch supported by pillars in the shape of statues known as the Caryatids. Building work finished around 410 BC.
Celebrating a victory
The Parthenon was dedicated to Athena, the patron goddess of Athens (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
The Parthenon was a temple dedicated to the goddess Athena, the patron of the city, and also served as the city treasury. It was built to celebrate the defeat of the Persians by Athens.
The Parthenon was built to celebrate the defeat of the Persians by Athens (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
The pediments and metopes or carved pictorial panels above the frieze of the Parthenon were decorated with mythological subjects.
The pediments of the Parthenon were decorated with mythological subjects (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
In contrast, the sculptor Phidias decided to decorate the frieze with an elaborate and eloquent depiction of the Panathenaic festival in honour of Athena. This festival took place every four years, lasted 12 days and included rituals and sacrifices, as well as athletic and musical contests. On the last day of the festival, the Panathenaic procession took place from Keramaikos through the city and up the cliffside of the citadel to the Temple of Athena at the Parthenon.
The story of this procession unfolds in more than 160 metres of continuous sculptural decoration on the Parthenon frieze.
The frieze consisted of 115 blocks, was 160 metres long and was 1.02 meters high. Some 378 human figures and deities and more than 200 animals, mainly horses, were depicted on the frieze. Groups of horses and chariots occupy most of the space. They are followed by the sacrificial procession, with animals and groups of men and women carrying ceremonial vessels and offerings.
The procession concludes with the giving of the peplos, the gift of the Athenian people to the decorated statue of Athena. To the left and right of the scene sit the twelve gods of Mount Olympus.
From that entire frieze, 50 metres are in the Acropolis Museum in Athens today, 80 metres are in the British Museum, London, one block is in the Louvre in Paris, and other fragments are scattered in museums in Palermo, the Vatican, Würzburg, Vienna, Munich and Copenhagen.
Building a museum
A statue of Papposilenos, a comic figure in ancient dramatic poetry, in the Acropolis Museum (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
The Acropolis Museum is only 280 metres from the Parthenon, or a short 400-metre walk. It stands by the south-east slopes of the Acropolis hill, on the ancient road that led up to the ‘sacred rock’ in classical times. It has a floor area of 14,000 square metres and includes 4,000 artefacts from the Acropolis hill.
The first museum on the Acropolis was built in 1874. It was expanded in the 1950s, but with successive excavations it was unable to house new finds. When I first visited it almost 30 years ago, it had already outgrown its capacity.
The new museum was first planned in the 1990s, but work was delayed for years and eventually abandoned because of sensitive archaeological finds on the site.
A new museum site was identified at Camp Makrygianni, an unused police barracks opposite the Theatre of Dionysus. It was agreed to build the new museum on pillars, elevated above any archaeological finds, and the new competition was won by the Swiss-born New York architect Bernard Tschumi, who worked closely with the Greek architect Michael Photiadis.
The museum stands on the ruins of part of Roman and early Byzantine Athens. During excavation work, archaeologists found two layers of houses and workshops, one from the early Byzantine era and another from the classical era.
As building work came near its completion in mid-2007, a delicate operation began to move the artefacts from the old museum on the Acropolis. Three tower cranes moved the collection without a mishap, and after six years of planning and building, the new museum opened in 2009.
Three architectural concepts
The Caryatids supported the porch of the Erechtheion (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
Bernard Tschumi’s design focusses on three concepts: light, movement, and a tectonic and programmatic element. Together, these concepts ‘turn the constraints of the site into an architectural opportunity, offering a simple and precise museum.’
The principal exhibits include statues and friezes from the Parthenon and the Caryatids from the Erechtheion. But there are treasures from other temples too, everyday items from archaic, classical and Byzantine Athens, and finds from early Christian homes in Athens, including mosaics, busts and amphorae.
The collections are exhibited on three levels, while another, middle level houses the museum shop, café and offices. As the museum is built over an extensive archaeological site, the floor, outside and inside, is often transparent so visitors can see each floor above and below and down the excavations below. At each level throughout the building, I could gaze down through the glass floor panels to see the excavations that revealed some of the exhibits.
Poseidon, Apollo and Artemis seen on Block VI of the east frieze (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
After crossing the ground floor lobby towards the turnstiles, I was in an ascending, wide glass-floored gallery that houses finds from the slopes of the Acropolis. The occasionally transparent floor provides a view of the archaeological excavation, while the upward sloping floor alludes to the ascent to the Acropolis.
In antiquity, the slopes marked the transition area between the city and the sanctuary. This was the area where official and popular cults, as well as large and small sanctuaries, existed alongside private houses.
This gallery houses finds from the sanctuaries on the slopes of the Acropolis, as well as everyday objects that Athenians used throughout time. Finds from some of the key sanctuaries on the slopes are exhibited on the left. Finds from the smaller sanctuaries and settlements that developed on the slopes of the hill are displayed on the right.
The horsemen on the frieze are participants in the Panathenaic procession (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
Visitors then arrive in the Archaic Acropolis Gallery, a large hall that accommodates archaic findings. The archaic period lasted throughout the seventh century BC until the end of the Persian Wars in 480-479 BC. During this period, city-state developed, making the transition from aristocracy to tyranny and, eventually, to democracy. It was a period marked by great achievements in the economy, art and intellectual life.
The exhibits in this gallery can be viewed as three-dimensional exhibits in the changing natural light, and visitors can see the delicate surface details of the sculptures.
On the south side of the gallery, depictions of young women (korai), the horse riders (hippeis) and others provide a striking picture of the Acropolis in the Archaic Period. Other artefacts and sculptures from the other Acropolis buildings on this floor including the Caryatids and other items from the Erechtheion, the Temple of Athena Nike and the Propylaea, and findings from Roman and early Christian Athens.
In the Parthenon Gallery
Horses and riders are life-like in their depiction (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
At the top floor of the museum, the Parthenon Gallery sits askew above the lower levels, giving it the same orientation as the ancient temple on the Acropolis. The spacing of the columns in the Parthenon hall is the same as that of the ancient temple, and glass walls on all four outside walls allow the natural light to illumine the Parthenon marbles as it would have on the ancient temple.
The 48 columns in the Parthenon hall mark the outline of the ancient temple and form a colonnade that displays the Parthenon marbles. To make viewing easier, the pediment marbles are displayed at eye level in front of the end columns.
The metopes are displayed on the columns, two per column, but not as high as they were in the ancient temple.
The frieze is displayed behind the metopes, forming a continuous band around the walls of a rectangular space set inside the columns, as in the ancient temple but not as high, again for ease of viewing.
A horseman on the trot on Block IX of the west frieze (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
The frieze is installed on a rectangular cement core that has exactly the same dimensions as the cella of the Parthenon. This allows a comprehensive viewing of the details of the frieze as the visitor walks around the perimeter of the gallery. The story of the Panathenaic Procession is pieced together with a combination of the original blocks of the frieze and cast copies of the pieces in museums abroad, including the British Museum and the Louvre.
In the same area, ancient marble inscriptions record in detail the costs of building the Parthenon and the statue of Athena Parthenos.
From the north side of the Parthenon hall, we could see the ancient temple on top of the Acropolis.
Returning the marbles
The battles between men and mythical creatures may represent the battle between Athenians and Persians (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
Bernard Tschumi’s museum has won international awards each year since it opened, including awards from the British Guild of Travel Writers, the American Institute of Architects, the Keck Award of the International Institute for Conservation and the International Association of Lighting Designers. Last year, the museum ranked ninth in TripAdvisor’s list of the 25 Best Museums in the world.
An additional motivation for building the new museum came from the responses that came every time Greece asked for the return of the Parthenon Marbles from the British Museum in London.
British officials claimed Greece had no suitable location to house the portions of the Parthenon frieze and other parts of the Acropolis that had been hacked away and pilfered by Thomas Bruce, Earl of Elgin, in 1801-1812.
The creation of this gallery to display of the Parthenon Marbles has been the key to all recent proposals for a new museum, and Greeks now hope the museum will boost the campaign for the return of the Parthenon Marbles to Athens.
This feature was first published in November 2017 in the ‘Church Review’ (Dublin and Glendalough) and the ‘Diocesan Magazine’ (Cashel, Ferns and Ossory).
The Acropolis seen from the balconies of the Acropolis Museum (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)
