ABSTRACT
Platia Syntagmatos, or Constitution Square, is a center of activity in modern Athens and represents nineteenth-century attempts to reinstate Greek civilization within Greece itself and, in a broader sense, recapture the ideals of classical architecture and urban form throughout the world. For Greece itself, as Eleni Bastéa observes, Athens’ nineteenth-century urban design conciliated the Greek nation’s “yearning for acceptance in the family of civilized, modern European nations; yearning for internal political and cultural unity and national definition; and yearning for a strong connection – if not identification – with the classical past” (Bastéa 1994: 112). Accordingly, the city’s plan and the Platia Syntagmatos synthesized and idealized the classical past into a nineteenth century city.
