A Visit to Athens, Greece

For all too many people, ATHENS is a city that happened two-and-a-half thousand years ago. It's true that even now the past looms large – literally, in the shape of the mighty Acropolis that dominates almost every view, as well as on every visitor's itinerary. Yet the modern conurbation is home to over four million people – more than a third of the Greek nation's population – and has undergone a transformation in the twenty-first century. The stimulus of the 2004 Olympics made it far more than a repository of antiquities, lifting it above the clichés of pollution and impossible traffic that have blighted its reputation in recent years.