National Gardens of Athens
Encyclopedia
The National Garden is a public park of 15.5 hectares (38.3 acre) in the center of the Greek
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....

 capital, Athens
Athens
Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...

. It is located directly behind the Greek Parliament building
Hellenic Parliament
The Hellenic Parliament , also the Parliament of the Hellenes, is the Parliament of Greece, located in the Parliament House , overlooking Syntagma Square in Athens, Greece....

 (The Old Palace) and continues to the South to the area where the Zappeion
Zappeion
The Zappeion is a building in the National Gardens of Athens in the heart of Athens, Greece. It is generally used for meetings and ceremonies, both official and private.-Constructing the Zappeion:...

 is located, across from the Panathenaiko
Panathinaiko Stadium
The Panathinaiko or Panathenaic Stadium , also known as the Kallimarmaro , is an athletic stadium in Athens that hosted the first modern Olympic Games in 1896...

 or Kalimarmaro Olympic Stadium
Olympic Stadium
The Olympic Stadium is the name usually given to the big centrepiece stadium of the Summer Olympic Games. Traditionally, the opening and closing ceremonies and the track and field competitions are held in the Olympic Stadium. Many, though not all, of these venues actually contain the words Olympic...

 of the 1896 Olympic Games. The Garden also encloses some ancient ruins, tambourines and Corinthian
Corinthian order
The Corinthian order is one of the three principal classical orders of ancient Greek and Roman architecture. The other two are the Doric and Ionic. When classical architecture was revived during the Renaissance, two more orders were added to the canon, the Tuscan order and the Composite order...

 capitals of columns, mosaic
Mosaic
Mosaic is the art of creating images with an assemblage of small pieces of colored glass, stone, or other materials. It may be a technique of decorative art, an aspect of interior decoration, or of cultural and spiritual significance as in a cathedral...

s, and other features. On the Southeast side are the busts of Capodistrias, the first governor
Governor
A governor is a governing official, usually the executive of a non-sovereign level of government, ranking under the head of state...

 of Greece, and of the Philhellene
Philhellenism
Philhellenism was an intellectual fashion prominent at the turn of the 19th century, that led Europeans like Lord Byron or Charles Nicolas Fabvier to advocate for Greek independence from the Ottoman Empire...

 Jean-Gabriel Eynard
Jean-Gabriel Eynard
Jean-Gabriel Eynard was a Swiss banker.-Biography:Jean-Gabriel Eynard although belonging to a family who had settled in Switzerland since the 17th century was actually born in Lyon France - where his father owned a business - on December 28 1775...

. On the South side are the busts of the celebrated Greek poets Dionysios Solomos
Dionysios Solomos
Dionysios Solomos was a Greek poet from Zakynthos. He is best known for writing the Hymn to Liberty , of which the first two stanzas, set to music by Nikolaos Mantzaros, became the Greek national anthem in 1865...

 , author of the Greek National Hymn, and Aristotelis Valaoritis
Aristotelis Valaoritis
Aristotelis Valaoritis was a Greek poet and politician. He was also the great-grandfather of Nanos Valaoritis, one of the most distinguished writers of Greece.-Biography:...

.

History

The Royal Garden was commissioned by Queen Amalia
Amalia of Oldenburg
Amalia of Oldenburg, Queen of Greece was the consort of King Otto of Greece . Born the daughter of Augustus, Grand Duke of Oldenburg and Princess Adelheid of Anhalt-Bernburg-Schaumburg-Hoym, she married King Otto on 22 December 1836, in Oldenburg...

 in 1838 and completed by 1840. It was designed by the German agronomist Frederick Schmidt who imported over 500 species of plants and a variety of animals including peacocks, ducks, and turtles. Unfortunately for many of the plants, the dry Mediterranean climate proved too harsh and they did not survive; animals continue to thrive. The upper garden, behind the Old Palace, was fenced off and was the private refuge of the King and Queen.

In 1878, the Danish architect Theophil Freiherr von Hansen
Theophil Freiherr von Hansen
Baron Theophil Edvard von Hansen was a Danish architect who later became an Austrian citizen...

 designed the neo-classical Zappeion
Zappeion
The Zappeion is a building in the National Gardens of Athens in the heart of Athens, Greece. It is generally used for meetings and ceremonies, both official and private.-Constructing the Zappeion:...

 Hall. It was named after Evangelis Zappas, an Epirote
Epirus (periphery)
Epirus , formally the Epirus Region , is a geographical and administrative region in northwestern Greece. It borders the regions of West Macedonia and Thessaly to the east, West Greece to the south, the Ionian Sea and the Ionian Islands to the west and the country of Albania to the north. The...

 businessman who was instrumental in starting the Zappian Olympic Games, a precursor to the modern Olympic Games
Olympic Games
The Olympic Games is a major international event featuring summer and winter sports, in which thousands of athletes participate in a variety of competitions. The Olympic Games have come to be regarded as the world’s foremost sports competition where more than 200 nations participate...

. The Zappeion was the Olympic village for the 1896 Summer Olympics in Athens and also as a venue for the fencing events. Starting in the 1920s, the area in front of the Zappeion was a major transportation hub for trams
Athens Tram
The Athens Tram is public tram network system serving Athens. It is constructed, owned and operated by Tram S.A. , subsidiary company of Attiko Metro S.A. ....

 and buses. Today it is used for public exhibitions. Henry Miller
Henry Miller
Henry Valentine Miller was an American novelist and painter. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new sort of 'novel' that is a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism, one that is...

 wrote in 1939:

"It remains in my memory like no other park I have known. It is the quintessence of a park, the thing one feels sometimes in looking at a canvas or dreaming of a place one would like to be in and never finds."

A Monkey Bite

The Royal Garden was the scene of an unusual turning point in Greek history. In 1920, at the end of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

, Greece under King Alexander and the government of Eleftherios Venizelos
Eleftherios Venizelos
Eleftherios Venizelos was an eminent Greek revolutionary, a prominent and illustrious statesman as well as a charismatic leader in the early 20th century. Elected several times as Prime Minister of Greece and served from 1910 to 1920 and from 1928 to 1932...

 remained committed to the Megali Idea
Megali Idea
The Megali Idea was an irredentist concept of Greek nationalism that expressed the goal of establishing a Greek state that would encompass all ethnic Greek-inhabited areas, since large Greek populations after the restoration of Greek independence in 1830 still lived under Ottoman rule.The term...

 (Greek
Greek language
Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

 for The Great Idea) that Greece should regain control from the Ottoman Empire
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...

 of portions of Asia Minor
Asia Minor
Asia Minor is a geographical location at the westernmost protrusion of Asia, also called Anatolia, and corresponds to the western two thirds of the Asian part of Turkey...

 on the Ionian
Ionian Sea
The Ionian Sea , is an arm of the Mediterranean Sea, south of the Adriatic Sea. It is bounded by southern Italy including Calabria, Sicily and the Salento peninsula to the west, southern Albania to the north, and a large number of Greek islands, including Corfu, Zante, Kephalonia, Ithaka, and...

 coast. In 1919, they began the Greco-Turkish War
Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922)
The Greco–Turkish War of 1919–1922, known as the Western Front of the Turkish War of Independence in Turkey and the Asia Minor Campaign or the Asia Minor Catastrophe in Greece, was a series of military events occurring during the partitioning of the Ottoman Empire after World War I between May...

 with the support of their former allies Britain
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 and France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

. While walking in the Garden on September 30, 1920, King Alexander was bitten by a pet monkey (whose pet it is not revealed) and he died of sepsis
Sepsis
Sepsis is a potentially deadly medical condition that is characterized by a whole-body inflammatory state and the presence of a known or suspected infection. The body may develop this inflammatory response by the immune system to microbes in the blood, urine, lungs, skin, or other tissues...

 three weeks later. His death ushered the return of his deposed father, King Constantine I
Constantine I of Greece
Constantine I was King of Greece from 1913 to 1917 and from 1920 to 1922. He was commander-in-chief of the Hellenic Army during the unsuccessful Greco-Turkish War of 1897 and led the Greek forces during the successful Balkan Wars of 1912–1913, in which Greece won Thessaloniki and doubled in...

 who had been deposed for his pro-German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 sympathies during the First World War. Upon his return to power, King Constantine assisted in the defeat of his political nemesis, Venizelos in the November 1920 General Election. The new Prime Minister, Dimitrios Gounaris
Dimitrios Gounaris
Dimitrios Gounaris was the Prime Minister of Greece from March 10, 1915 to August 23, 1915 and April 8, 1921 to May 16, 1922...

, a monarchist, began replacing the Venezelist military staff with officers more loyal to the new King. As a result of this change in political environment and it is argued, the reduction in military experience by the Army's General Staff, the Allied Powers withdrew their support. The result was the 1922 Great Fire of Smyrna
Great Fire of Smyrna
The Great Fire of Smyrna or the Catastrophe of Smyrna was a fire that destroyed much of the port city of Izmir in September 1922. Eye-witness reports state that the fire began on 13 September 1922 and lasted until it was largely extinguished on September 22...

 and the 1923 Exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey known collectively by the Greeks as the "catastrophe."

Today

Today the National Garden, as it was renamed after the 1974 plebiscite to abolish the monarchy, is open to the public from sunrise to sunset. The main entrance is on Leoforos Amalias, the street named after the Queen who envisioned this park. You can also enter the garden from one of three other gates: the central one, on Vasilissis Sophias Avenue, another on Herodou Attikou Street
Herodou Attikou Street
Herodou Attikou Street or Irodou Attikou Street is located east of downtown Athens and is adjacent to the National Garden of Athens...

and the third gate connects the National Garden with the Zappeion park area. In the National Garden there are a duck pond, a small zoo, a Botanical Museum, a small cafe and a Children's Library and playground.
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK