The so-called Makriyannis Plot in the centre of Athens is an area marked by critical phases of ancient and modern Greek history. For this reason, it has been listed as place of diachronic Greek cultural heritage. It is a symbolically charged space laden with multiple experiences, meanings, ideas, and uses. Using this site as an example, I explore diachronic constructions of such experiences and ideas through spatial receptions, uses, and performances. I introduce the conception of ‘bonds’ and ‘affinities’ between successional spaces as key to an interpretation of these constructions.
Over the history of the modern Greek state, activity in the Makriyannis Plot has varied considerably, and the place's meaning for the city has undergone many shifts. The place started out as a space of military services and public health, thus controlled by the State for the benefit of the city. Later, it was transformed into a space of armed exercise of power and supervision, and discipline, thus inaccessible and controlled; in particular, it bore the scars of the Civil War. Finally, its character has been fully reversed by its use today, when it has been turned into a space that highlights memory and cultural continuity, cultural influence, and national identity.
The plot lies in the Makriyanni neighbourhood in central Athens, named after the general of the Greek Revolution, Yannis Makriyannis, who lived and owned land there.Footnote 1 The so-called Makriyannis Plot originally hosted a military hospital whose still existing building—named Weiler after its architect—eventually became a police station. The most dramatic phase of the plot's history was the Dekemvriana (1944) in which the Weiler Building was a base of the gendarmerie, hence involved in the clashes between the gendarmerie and ELAS.Footnote 2 Another deadly battle in 1949 transformed the entire neighbourhood into a landscape of debris and corpses.Footnote 3 After that, the space was in disuse for several decades, and it was only in 1973 that the Greek State recognized its importance for modern Greek history. It declared the Weiler Building listed and gave it to the Greek Ministry of Culture. The building was renovated and has housed the Centre for Acropolis Studies since 1987. Until the 1990s, the University of Athens used a nearby part of the plot to conduct annual systematic excavations as student training.
This was the temporal sequence of spatial uses in this small part of Athens until the end of the 1990s, when preparations for the construction of a new Museum of the Acropolis began. This construction process brought to light another long sequence of historical spaces at the same location. Both in theory and practice, these spaces now had to be integrated in contemporary everyday life of residents and visitors. I discuss here a single aspect of the story around the construction of the New Museum of Acropolis in Athens: the reception and reuse of spaces constructed by one culture by later users of the same place. Such a reception is diachronically expressed through social spatial practices: reuse, reconstruction, modification, or even through an entire transformation of spaces. In the second and third parts of my article a set of such practices are presented as diachronically performed at historical and contemporary spaces within the Makriyannis Plot. My main argument is that these practices aimed—and still aim—not only at a practical but at a mental, spiritual, and symbolic appropriation of existing spaces by later visitors.
When it comes to the interpretation of receptions of spaces diachronically, I engage with theoretical concepts from cultural geography and social anthropology. Conceptions of space in geography allow understanding of cultures through the spaces they create (hereafter referred to as ‘spatial reception’). One such conception is Henri Lefebvre's ‘spatial trialectics’. Lefebvre argues that every society produces a space, its own space, and, in that sense, societies develop their own spatial practices and forge their own—appropriated—spaces.Footnote 4 I argue here that past and present cultures can be understood through an investigation of the spaces they produced and produce. A helpful concept here is that of the social performances of spaces (spatial performativity), which allow a definition of ways in which space can be intentionally invested with cultural meaning through social performativity.Footnote 5 I show that spaces are dynamically and constantly improvised through human perceptions and performances in diverse and unpredictable ways, thereby endlessly acquiring fresh cultural meanings. Two anthropological concepts allow further deconstructing the ever-changing meanings of spaces. First, ‘bonding’ refers to the creation of social connections; it is a concept linked to a notion of social performativity which aims to negotiate kinship, relatedness, and constitution of relationships.Footnote 6 Secondly, ‘affinity’ refers to ‘kinship of spirit’.Footnote 7 It has four dimensions around which these bonds are negotiated: ‘fixed’ affinities (natural or biological); ‘creative’ affinities (socially negotiated); ‘ethereal’ affinities (mysterious, magical, metaphysical, spiritual); and ‘sensory’ affinities (physical and material). These affinities intersect and overlap, representing ‘relational associations’.Footnote 8 Spatial and temporal proximity are crucial factors of social affinity.Footnote 9 I use these theoretical concepts to interpretate successional and interconnected uses of spaces within the Makriyannis Plot in Athens as well as constructions of their meanings as mutually ‘affinal’.
1990s: a ‘New Museum of the Acropolis’ in the history of the Makriyannis Plot
To start at the beginning of the story, a New Museum of Acropolis was conceived in 1976 by Konstantinos Karamanlis.Footnote 10 The Prime Minister set out the need for a new Museum, where eventually the Parthenon sculptures would be reunited, selecting the Makriyannis Plot as its eventual construction site. For the next thirty years, the discussions around this construction were unprecedented, including political confrontations in Parliament, public debates, and criticism, as well as much deliberation within the archaeological community about whether the Makriyannis Plot was the appropriate place for it. The museum design was also a contested issue: after two unsuccessful architectural competitions in the 1970s, Melina Mercouri initiated a third in 1989.Footnote 11 But this too was annulled in 1997, because excavations had revealed a historical habitation of the plot. Before the beginning of another tender, systematic excavation of the site aimed to investigate this habitation, complementing the adjacent excavation resulting from the construction of a Metro station. The excavations revealed a dense distribution of archaeological finds at the eastern, northern and western parts of the Makriyannis Plot.Footnote 12 The finds belonged to a large, densely inhabited urban neighbourhood of Athens, dating from the late fifth century BC to the late twelfth century AD.Footnote 13 They included remains of 32 enkainia (foundation rituals for buildings which signified their novel function and meaning), water infrastructure, roads, houses, baths, workshops, domestic altars, and abundant artefacts.
The ‘past of this place’: crafting a record of successional spaces
The succession of historical spaces in this context can be fleetingly reconstructed with the help of the excavators’ plan of discovered structures (Fig. 1). In antiquity, this residential quarter was adjacent to important religious and cultural sites and was defined by two parallel roads and one road at a right angle to them.Footnote 14 While the main roads seem to have remained in use until the end of the fifth century, sixth and seventh-century constructions disturbed the earlier grid.Footnote 15 Settlers’ approaches towards earlier buildings varied: sometimes respect for and reuse of older spaces; sometimes partial modification and wall-relocation; even complete transformation.
Colour-coded chronological plan of the excavation's architectural phases. Plan by D. Pandermalis, S. Eleftheratou, C. Vlassopoulou, ‘The Archaeological Excavation beneath the Museum’, in Acropolis Museum Guide, ed. S. Eleftheratou (Athens 2017), Fig. 10, p. 24.
The case of Building Θ represents a pattern: the poorly constructed ancient houses (Fig. 1: walls in red and blue) were destroyed in the first century BC and workshops were established upon their ruins. In the second century AD, the site was reorganized: a demand for larger residences imposed an elimination of the network of little streets.Footnote 16 The quality of constructions reveals a change of character of the neighbourhood and a rise in their residents’ economic/social status: most residences acquired courtyards with peristyles, marble or mosaic floors, several rooms with wall paintings, latrines, private baths. One ancient well was found filled with sculptures of ancient deities. In the fourth century, the neighbourhood was again reorganized as a luxury district. A residence, with a large apsidal reception hall and private bath appeared (Building Z, walls in orange). This area was destroyed by the end of the fifth century, but, shortly after, most of Building Z was repaired and developed into another impressive residence (walls in green). It was entirely reorganized as a complex of many annexes at several levels, including an apsidal reception room and an extended bath. This building was destroyed, but some sections were repaired in the early seventh century (walls in purple) while, next door, another urban villa was erected on the top of two older houses: this is the Building E which today dominates the space (walls in purple). It had abundant wells and cisterns, storerooms, living spaces, a large apsidal reception room, and a small three-niche chamber. In its north-western part, there was a large and finely built, tower-like hall of circular plan.
This complex was abandoned in the seventh century, when the character of this area had changed.Footnote 17 After 711, its spaces acquired an industrial use and Building E hosted pottery- and metalwork-workshops.Footnote 18 After a break during the tenth century, industry continued into the eleventh and twelfth centuries, including pottery and metal workshops, a tannery, storage rooms, residences, and a cemetery.Footnote 19 In the thirteenth century the area was abandoned and remained unbuilt until the erection of the military hospital established in 1836.Footnote 20
The discovery of all these layers of the past had to be taken into account considered in the construction of the New Museum on this site. In 2000, a new tender was released and the museum's construction approved.Footnote 21 The question of the antiquities and the ways in which they might be integrated into the new building generated another round of public debate and legal adventures.Footnote 22 At first, it was widely commonly believed that it would be necessary for the exposed antiquities to be removed and exhibited elsewhere, thereby accommodating the original plan. But things turned out differently.
The 2000s: (re-)creating bonds and affinities among successive spaces
The findings of the excavation were considered significant for the site and the antiquities remained in situ. Museum and excavation have been combined into a unique, pioneering exhibition ensemble.Footnote 23 For this to be accomplished, technically speaking, the architectural plan of the museum basement was adjusted to the distribution of the antiquities: the subterranean levels of the museum were constructed at the places where few or no antiquities had been found.Footnote 24 The areas of dense distribution of finds were included within a large substrate pillared room with an open roof admitting which allowed daylight and a view of the antiquities from the ground floor (Fig. 2). The alignment of the ancient roads dictated the architectural axes of the museum at the lower levels, thereby connecting it to the excavated settlement; by contrast, the top floor hosting the Parthenon Room has a different alignment, parallel to the Parthenon at the summit.Footnote 25
The excavation remains as viewed from the Museum entrance floor, with the round Byzantine tower in the foreground. Author's photograph.
This creation of spatial affinities between the two places (Acropolis and its museum) was clearly the deliberate intention of the architects.Footnote 26 Both the location of the museum in the modern city and its architectural plan aimed, from start, to create bonds between the two places in the minds and hearts of Athenians and foreign visitors through visual contact (Fig. 3).Footnote 27 The museum looks like a modern version of the Doric architecture of the Parthenon, which lies beside it but at a lower level. It is built in so as to allow visitors direct visual contact with Acropolis, especially from the Parthenon Room.Footnote 28 The visitors to the Acropolis can see and acknowledge the museum as a clearly distinct feature of the city below, inviting them by its orientation.Footnote 29
Competition rendering showing the building mediating between the Acropolis above and the archaeological remnants below. Plan by Y. Aesopos, ‘The New Acropolis Museum: Re-making the Collective’, in The New Acropolis Museum, ed. Bernard Tsumi Architects (Athens 2009), Figure on p. 69.
Furthermore, the plan of the museum and the internal arrangement of its collections emphasizes affinities of historical spaces which it binds together in a unique exhibition ensemble. The ensemble consists of two distinct areas of visit: the museum, where finds from the top and the foot of the Hill of Acropolis are displayed; and the remains of the Late Antique and Byzantine neighbourhood, which appear through the building's large openings and glass floors and are open to visitors.Footnote 30 Thus it is that an exhibition of the artefacts from the excavation of the neighbourhood is the first display once one enters the museum, before one goes on to the history of Acropolis.
The new Museum of the Acropolis was constructed to be a space that encourages visitors, through stimulating their vision and other senses, to connect architecture and artefacts from the Acropolis hill and surrounding areas, dating from prehistory to Byzantine periods. Binding past and present, history and reality, it makes the users of the space move freely and easily through space and time. The establishment of these bonds are negotiated with the visitors through the projection of various affinities among successional spaces. Fixed (natural) affinities are highlighted by the visual unification of all spaces as parts of the same landscape consisting of the Acropolis and the Makriyannis Plot. Secondly, sensory (physical and material) affinities are projected by the architects through achieving a ‘material’ way of interrelating historical spaces within a single structure, the Museum building. This interrelation is accomplished through an encouragement of specific sensorial—especially visual—experiences of the building by the visitors, as described above. Thirdly, creative (socially negotiated) affinities are claimed and suggested by the archaeologists and curators through the building's structure and display arrangement.
Through this arrangement, they direct visitors into a spatiotemporal trajectory. This trajectory begins from the place's historical past (in the basement) and leads to a spatial expression of its ideal contemporary meaning (through the museum on top of the settlement). This process finally generates ethereal (mysterious, magical, metaphysical, spiritual) affinities between the old and the new places. The established trajectory constitutes a spatial path symbolizing a route in time: it leads from the Greek past to the Greek future and establishes bonds between the two. Visitors go from the historical settlement at the basement to the modern building by passing through an antique enkainion (which signifies an investment of the place with new meaning). On their way up, they follow the course of the history of both the Acropolis and the Makriyannis Plot. Finally, they reach the top floor in which Greek antiquity, symbolized by its exquisite aesthetic accomplishment, the Parthenon, is directly associated with contemporary national identity and international aspirations.Footnote 31 Through this spatial arrangement, a creation of bonds and interconnections spreads throughout all levels of space and time implied in the building. In this way, this space links one Greek past (consisting of narratives of the ancient and Byzantine history of this part of Athens) with a Greek ideal for the future.
Clearly, the antiquities discovered beneath the museum were perceived by its planners as a useful tool to achieve the mission of establishing affinities and creating bonds. The spaces revealed by excavation were designed by the architects in cooperation with archaeologists and museologists, to be ‘performed’ as ‘bridges among cultures’, within the overall Museum plan.Footnote 32 The political intentions behind this junction as well as its results have already been a topic for extensive discussion in museum studies.Footnote 33 Yet it is incontestable that this decision has delivered two positive outcomes. Firstly, the ensemble works as a bridge between different historical cultures (ancient, medieval, and modern times). Secondly, it works as a bridge between tradition and innovation through a ‘spatial’ integration of historical legacy in the modern way of life. Thirdly, it works as a bridge between two distinct ways of using the same space: living and working place in the past, leisure place today.
The 2010s: performing symbolic relations among successive spaces
Since its opening in 2009, the Museum has welcomed some 1.5 million visitors annually. Visitors have been creating yet another, peculiar and makeshift, spatial innovation in its underground Byzantine quarters. Specifically, they have invented a new way of using the place as a playground. They have developed a very particular social and spatial practice which consists of throwing coins (Fig. 4) in the antiquities in display under the entrance of the Museum. However, this coin-throwing does not extend through the entire excavation site: it has a specific target, the impressive circular Byzantine constructions of the residential complex (Fig. 2). This is a strange and amusing fate for the original finely constructed tower of the early seventh-century Byzantine villa (Building E): its circular shape and durable masonry made it attractive to both Byzantine and modern later users. The Byzantine later users, on one hand, perceived the large round hall as an excellent potting infrastructure. The first modern viewers of its ruins, on the other (i.e., the builders of the New Museum of Acropolis) saw in it an attractive feature for display among the excavation finds, hence gave it a visually central place within the basement exhibition as viewed from the entrance floor of the Museum. Finally, the modern visitors of the Museum found in it not only a central feature of the place but also an irresistible opportunity for bonding through play.
Coin throwing by a Museum visitor. Author's photograph.
The main features of the coin-throwing practice enacted in the entrance's large opening towards the basement excavation, can be defined as follows. Visitors throw coins upon exit, after they have visited the Museum collections, not before (Fig. 4). They belong to diverse nationalities and of all ages. Some simply intend to follow the tradition at sight; they are attracted by the shine of the coins filling up the bottoms of the circular constructions. They throw the coin without particular interest to reach any practical target, except perhaps a symbolic one (to make a wish). Others find it a challenge to reach the circle with their coin from above, so try a couple of times or more and celebrate the successful result. They thus create, amid the public space, their own space: a playground. Some of them stay there for quite a while, looking at the Museum and discussing the antiquities displayed below. When asked why they threw the coin, they explain that they felt like leaving a little something behind. Others say that by leaving something that belongs to them behind, they create a bond to this magical site linked to the Acropolis. This sounds like a bond between the self and the other, the modern and the ancient, the present and the past—thus creating a continuity of self and space in time. They seem to try making themselves a part of the admirable place by giving it something they own. This is what anthropologists call ’contagious magic’: the coin in our hands becomes an extension of ourselves; when it goes into the soil the physical contact extends from ourselves to place, thus creating a bond between people and space.Footnote 34
This is reminiscent of the Trevi Fountain in Rome, where visitors traditionally throw a coin into it using the right hand over the left shoulder, if they wish to return to the city one day. Compared to this practice, coin throwing at the Museum of Acropolis combines both traditional and novel features. On the one hand, it is performed at an environment dedicated to antiquity, where excavations have revealed the existence of similar practices in antiquity (such as putting precious statues into wells). The practice of ‘gilding’ (Gr. χρύσωμα, i.e., that is, cladding with gold or gold coins) is a Greek custom that is thought to guarantee good luck and fortune in everyday life, endurance in time, longevity, even immortality. On the other hand, this practice derives from visitors’ original, spontaneous, and generous initiative which is perhaps influenced by popular fashion trends and ways of thinking. Their initiative in the case of the Museum of Acropolis reveals a variety of objectives: contribution, participation, connectedness, establishment of relations, creation of imaginaries of affinity and kinship, mnemonic production, construction of identity. It involves a kinaesthetic performance of an underlying statement—such as ‘I was there’ and ‘I feel part of some greater entity’—as reaction to a sensorial experience of embodied ‘reception in process’. The first step is the visitors’ encounter with an (in geographical and temporal terms) foreign culture, landscape, and way of life through the spaces on display. Then, to comprehend what they are viewing, they begin the process of reception by performing ambivalent gestures, at once traditional and modern. The spaces under discussion, and the spatial practices they inspire, serve to bridge the gap between different cultures and mentalities.
Such performances lie at the intersections of materiality, spatiality, embodiment, the senses, intersubjectivity, identity, and memory. In the present case, sensorial perceptions of materiality stimulate spiritual empathy in the mind; experiences of the present create memories of the past; an intentional projection of national/cultural identity constructions by archaeologists and museologists also generates in-situ improvised performances of cultural diversity (folklore and international traditions). These sorts of experience possess, in my opinion, authenticity and diachronicity. Authenticity is manifested in the spontaneous multi-sensorial and multi-temporal mnemonic production demonstrated through the practice of coin-throwing described above. This practice involves a ritual performance of spatial reception which is based upon kinaesthetic and haptic visuality and inter-subjective constructions of memory. Alongside the officially intended memorial constructions, which according to the architects aimed to reconstruct collectivity by means of architecture, the improvisation of ensuing spaces by unpredicted social performativity has now delivered an additional, different effect of collectivity. The consistency in the physical motion of throwing the coins in the ancient pits brings about a different integration of the individual with the collective.Footnote 35 The diachronicity of these spatial experiences and mnemonic productions is expressed in the historical receptions of successive spaces in Makriyannis Plot by different cultures.
To conclude, many aspects of everyday life of the people who have been either living in—or coming as pilgrims to—the shadow of the Acropolis during the last 2500 years illustrate multiple receptions of historical spaces in the so-called Makriyannis Plot that now hosts the Acropolis Museum. Receptions of historical spaces have been being diachronically enacted at several levels and in interesting ways. In an everlasting sequence, antique spaces were perceived and either ignored or re-used and modified by Roman and Byzantine residents, as was the Byzantine neighbourhood by the Museum creators. At the end of this red thread lie contemporary perceptions of the new complex – the antique and Byzantine neighbourhood within the context of the Museum of Acropolis – by contemporary citizens and visitors, and their spontaneous signification of the entire complex with symbolic meaning. This signification is enacted though spatial performance, and through a particular makeshift spatial practice which involves throwing coins into a circular place. In this practice, the Byzantine constructions attract visitors’ attention for a double reason: seeing them as antiquities and performing them as ritual spaces which magically establish affinities and bonds for the sake of the practitioners. By their circular shape and shining content, these constructions seem to be transformed into ‘reservoirs of treasure’ through which the Museum is being acknowledged and enacted as a symbolic ‘golden’ place. The coin creates a bond between the visitor and her/his favourite site which hosts a global and diachronic cultural capital.
Myrto Veikou is Assistant Professor of Byzantine Archaeology at the Department of History and Archaeology, University of Patras. She is researcher for the Department of Linguistics and Philology, Uppsala University, and research collaborator for the Austrian Academy of Sciences. She studied History and Archaeology (Athens) and specialized in Byzantine Archaeology and Literary Studies (Birmingham, Paris I Sorbonne, Athens) and Uppsala. She has been teaching Byzantine history and archaeology since 2007 and Byzantine philology and literary studies since 2017. Her latest book is Spatial Paths to Holiness: literary ‘lived spaces’ in eleventh-century Byzantine saints' lives (Studia Byzantina Upsaliensia 22, Uppsala 2023).
