Latest touristical news from Greece

General informations :

 

 

- New highway in the Peloponnese : 300kms of new road will be under construction in the west part of the peninsula from december 2007 till 2011.

- Opening hours for the main sites and national museums : extension up to 7.30 instead of 3.30, starting from June 2005.

Latest news from Athens :

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

- Tourist Information Office : the new EOT office is on 26 Amalias St., in the centre of Athens.

- Subway : the new liaison "international airport <=> town center" takes 25mn to get you to Syntagma square.

- The Monastiraki subway station becomes an museum ! Travellers can now admire the antic water system of the city, revealed during the excavation works for the subway.

- National Museum of Athens : the famous ancient ceramics housed on the first floor and the bronze of the ground floor will be visible in april 2005 and the museum will be completely opened to the public this summer 2005, after a restauration campaign which lasted 2 years.

- Acropolis

* The Acropolis becomes the first monument among the european heritage monuments.

* New Acropolis Museum : it will open by the end of 2008, due to suspension of building work after intervention by comitees of local inhabitants, worried by possible damage to classical vestiges near by. By then, the 308 tons of the 4.446 artifacts will stand in its brand new rooms.

Mars 2004 :

 

 Rion-Antirion bridge (2,2 kms long, see my guide "Peloponnese & Athenes" p.122) : it was crossed by the Olympic flame in august 2004, and is now opened to car traffic. Built by a French-Greek consortium, it was finished ahead of schedule and presented a difficult technical challenge because of depth of water (60m in the center of the Corinthian Gulf), a silt-covered seabed, and a very high seismic activity in the surrounding area. It is the longest in the world of that type.

Mars 2004 :

Mount Ahos : a recent fire has partially destroyed the Serbian monastery of Hulandari. About 3/4 of the buildings have been destroyed, along with many frescoes dating from the XIII and XIV century. Fortunately, most of the works of art and relics were stored in a building which escaped this accident.

February 2004 :

 

 

 Greece has presented its candidature to become an "associate member" of the International Organization of Francophonia. It has already accentuated its efforts in the use of French (the official Olympic language, along with English) during the Olympic Games 2004.

January 2004 :

 

 

 Crete : a minoan boat reconstructed on the original scale by a team of researchers was launched. It was mostly built by using the techniques and materials of the time. The boat went first island-hoping its way towards Athens, then returned to Crete to decorate the naval museum of Hania.

January 2004 :

Touristical frequentation has suffered a 15% diminution in 2003 ; national museums have thus lost 34% of their visitors, mainly because a lot of them where closed due to renovation in view of the O. G.
The most frequented sites where the Acropolis of Athens (770.000 vis.), Knossos in Crete (634.000 vis.), Delphi, Olympia, and the Acropolis of Lindos in the island of Rhodes.

December 2003 :

 

 

 Pinde : the government has announced the installation of a National Park in the most beautiful area of Pinde, in the north of Epirus. It will include the 46 famous villages of Zagori and the Vikos canyon. Ideal for the trekker!

July 2002 :

 

 Isthmia, North-East of Peloponnese (p. 217 of the guide "Peloponnese & Athenes"!) : a splendid mosaic of the Roman period, but of Greek manufacturing, has been discovered in the ruins of a Roman villa.

June 2001 :

 

 

Near Dimini, in the south of Volos, a palace dating from the mycaenian period has be uncovered, and it could be the one inhabited by the famous Jason. The city would have been abandoned by its inhabitants around 1 000 B.C. Archaeologists discovered vessels, statuettes and inscriptions in Linear B.