High life | 6 August 2015

Nestled under the Acropolis, snug and safe among the ancient ruins of a long-ago grandeur, Plaka is the only remaining protected area of Athens. Greedy developers are as welcome there as a certain Minnesota dentist would be at an Aspinall Foundation animal sanctuary, but that doesn’t stop them from trying. I see signs on old and battered but beautifully classical houses asking for bids ‘to develop’. No harm in trying, I guess. With the economy in the toilet — a horrid word but necessary — anything can happen, and Greek law has never been sacrosanct when the loot’s right.

Never mind. It’s 40 degrees Celsius, probably 50 on the marble stones on the hill across from the Acropolis where I’m training. It is the hill of the Muses, where the monument to Philopappos, a Syrian prince, an Athenian citizen and a Roman consul, was erected in around 100 AD. He was a benefactor to the city and the marble monument to him was used by the wily Venetian Morosini as a gun emplacement to fire on the barbaric Turk dug inside the Acropolis and using the Parthenon as a powder keg.