Athens: The only European capital that does not flow through any river
A constant flow of fresh water has always been considered one of the criteria when looking for a new settlement or building a city, as water is not only a symbol of life but also an essential component of life itself. The contemporary Athenatohowever, it is the only European capital that does not flow through a river!
The surprise, however, lies not only in this feature of the country’s capital, but in the fact that this was not always the case. And this is because in the past Athens had not one, not two but three rivers running through the city.
Who were they and what happened to these three rivers?
The rivers that ran through Athens
Best known of all – at least to the residents of modern Athens – the river Kifisos (part of the National Road is named after him) originates from the mountains north of Athens and flows directly under the western part of the city, ending at Saronic gulf. So does the river Ilissos, although it originates in the mountains northwest of Athens and flows through the heart of the city to join the Iridanos River. While Kifissos and Ilissos are the largest rivers of Athens, Iridanos is the smallest of the three and originates from its base. Lycabettus hill.
In the underground routes under it, Ilissos passes through many things focal points of the cityAs the Panathenaic Stadiumthe temple of Olympian Zeus and the church of Agia Fotini Ilissou in its suburb Mets and under him National Garden Athena’s. Between the church and the Temple of Olympian Zeus is one of the few places where part of the river can be seen, although it does not look like a river, only the lush vegetation growing in its dry channel indicates its existence. Eventually he converges with him Iridan in the suburb of Kallithea southwest of the city and continues towards the sea.
The rivers of Athens during antiquity
Long before the Ilissos River begins to be built –all that changed in the 1930s when urban development in Athens began to flourish– was a large part of Athenian society both in antiquity and in the middle ages.
The river Ilisos is already mentioned by Plato, while he saw philosophers from Socrates to the Cynics teaching on its banks. Being the most central point of the city, it played its role both as a place of ritual and recreation.
The famous Greek philosopher Socrates he is reported to have sat by his waters and conversed with his devoted followers “Let us turn aside here and go along the Ilissus—then we may sit quietly where we like.” While due to the hot and dry climatic conditions of Athens the river did not always flowafter periods of rain it carried the flood waters quickly to the sea.
On the other hand, Mr Iridan first mentioned in one of his later dialogues Platothe “Judgment”, from which the famous myth of her lost kingdom also originates Atlantis. It takes us back to ancient times, when the Acropolis it was so great that it reached as far as Iridanus and Ilissus, and included Pnyca within it.
The river received large amounts of flooding from the surrounding hills such as the Acropolis, however this was rectified in the 6th century BC when two canals were built, putting the river underground. These channels were discovered in excavations in 1960.
The undergrounding of Ilissos
While the Eridanos, therefore, “sunk” in the 6th century, the undergrounding of Ilissos took place more recently. The coverage of the river Ilissos began to make him 19th century for some very specific reasons. First, allow her expansion of the city of Athens, offering more surfaces in the facilities on which buildings and infrastructure could be built. With the ever-increasing population, the increase in habitable land was welcome and so the river began to be carried underground.
Second, from the 19th century to the early 1900s the banks of the river began to be cited as a source of materials for the construction of roads within the city. This exploitation degraded both the water quality and the river’s ability to hold floodwaters, so its ability to protect the city was greatly reduced. Apart from that it was also contaminated with sewage and wasteand hence there was strongly the need for consolidation of.
The lost rivers today
Today the rivers Kifisos, Ilissos and Iridan that once openly traversed the city of Athens are hidden in its subsoil, flowing in concrete channels below the surface of the city. Some of the remnants of the original Iridanos river channel can be seen preserved at the metro station in the square Constitutionwhich were found when work was being done on the subway in 1992.
Some parts of Kifissos are located directly below the national road visible to this day, while on a route to the Temple of Zeus, in the center of Athens, you may even pass through the open canal of Ilissos. If you look carefully you can see some animals hiding in the foliage of its banks!
Athens is famous for its hot and dry summers, which means that the green areas within the city are few, but some of the green shelters that exist today, such as National Garden, can be attributed to these underground rivers that their water is used to nourish these points from deep below.