ABSTRACT
The plan created for the new city of Athens would be a modern ‘answer’ to the medieval urban fabric, which was the outcome of a free, ‘organic’ development. It was based on a triangle consisting of Piraeus, Stadium and Hermes Street and Athena Street as its bisector. Hermes Street, the triangle’s base, Athena Street, and Aeolus Street, parallel to it, were the main streets of the new city, which linked it to the old one, through their penetration into the latter. To permit the creation of the modern urban fabric, many of the byzantine and post-byzantine churches were demolished, and others had to be adapted to the new dominant aesthetic ideas. As for the pre-revolutionary houses, they were typical specimens of traditional architecture of Ottoman times, very different from the principles of classicism. Therefore, the houses that had survived the destruction had to undergo important modifications in order to be adapted to the new era. Very few of them preserved their original form, while others disappeared, yielding to the wish to supplant the pre-modern town with the modern one.
