The legendary topography of Athens: ottoman monuments and national narratives

This piece discusses the Ottoman-era monuments that survive in the City of Athens today, and how their survival relates to ongoing discussions of greek national identity.It discusses first the monuments themselves, focusing on two surviving mosques, the Fethiye Cami and Tzisdarakis Mosque, the Hamam of Abid Efendi, and a few other remnants. The discussion is situated within a theoretical framework of collective memory, based on the work of Maurice Halbwachs, and examines the way a built environment interacts with and is shaped by/shapes identities. Ultimately it is argued that the monuments that remain in Athens have been instrumentalised in various ways so they do not present a challenge to dominant understandings of greek national identity, but have been decontextualized so they fit safely into the prevailing narrative. The first chapter is an examination of the way a national ideology was constructed in the early days of the Greek state. The focus on classical Greece led to a prioritisation of ancient remains and the creation of a material environment that reflected the "purity" of Greece's supposed heritage. This meant that Ottoman and Venetian, and in some cases Byzantine as well, remains were removed to support the ideology of modern Greece as the direct descendant of classical Greece. The role of the city of Athens made this process even more important, since the new capital was chosen for its connection to the classical past. Deliberate efforts were made, especially on the Acropolis, to remove traces from Ottoman and Venetian constructions. Other areas, such as Anafiotika and the Ancient Agora, also demonstrate the degree to which the built environment in the centre of Athens can impact discussions of national identity and indeed reflect the way all non-classical remnants were sometimes considered inappropriate for the capital of the Greek state. The discussion of the monuments themselves further demonstrates the way these specific constructions have been transformed so that they do not threaten the ideal of the Greek state. After an examination of the rehabilitation of Byzantium, and the presentation of a "continuous" Greek past in the Benaki Museum that sidelines Ottoman and Venetian "occupation", it is clear that the urban landscape of Athens has been deliberately constructed