Until we arrived in Athens early on a May morning, neither HL nor I had ever been to Greece.  We had traveled to some unusual and even alarming places, but not to the city that had enticed everyone from conquerors to consumers of package holidays since Classical times. Our hotel was in the Syntagma district, where a glance down any street reveals Athens’ multilayered and lengthy past.

          On our first walk in central Athens, we noticed that small Greek Orthodox churches had been preserved as the city grew around them. 
 

          The Byzantine  Church of  Theotokos Gorgoepekoos and Ayios Eleytherios was built in the 13th Century, on the ruins of a temple to Eleithyia, the protector goddess of pregnant women.

The interior of the Church of Theotokos Gorgoepekoos and Ayios Eleytherios
 

           Sharing the plaza was the Metropolitan Cathedral, whch was far newer, larger, grander and blander than its Byzantine neighbor.  A Danish architect had designed it at the behest of Greece’s ruling family.  It was completed in 1862.

          One of the oddest churches in Athens was on Miteopoleos Street, very close to our hotel.  Agia Dynami, meaning Holy Power, was erected where there had been an altar to Herakles, better known outside Greece as Hercules.  That Herakles altar had covered the entrance to the network of caves that underlies much of Athens.  To me, the 16th Century church looked as if it had been crammed into a space left in the modern edifice, in contravention of the obvious historical sequence.  

The charmless modern building dwarfing Agia Dynami used to be the Greek Ministry of Education.  Now it is a luxury hotel.  Presumably, its rooms are not as ugly as the Electra Metropolis Hotel's exterior.