The Parthenon and its spectacular marbles survived for two thousand years. Then Ottoman Occupation enabled an opportunistic British diplomat to run amok among Greece’s greatest monuments, and pillage the symbol of Greek civilization and democracy.
For 2,500 years the most spectacular marble statues ever seen graced the Parthenon, atop the Acropolis in Athens. For all of that time artists, architects, mathematicians, and scholars studied and admired the Temple of Athena and her sculptures. We’ll talk history, the man who envisioned the Acropolis complex, and why the Parthenon Marbles are pride and “essence of Greekness.”
How a Turkish shadow puppet evolved into a symbol of Greek suffering and resistance. Funny and subversive, Karagiózis connected Greeks in cities, villages and islands by keeping their music, culture and the seeds of resistance alive; sustaining Greeks through the Ottoman Occupation, the War for Independence, civil war, Nazi brutality and military oppression.
What led up to the ethnic cleansing of Anatolia and the destruction of Türkiye’s most beautiful and ethnically diverse city. Greeks, Armenians, Assyrians and Jews were erased from the region for the first time in 2,500 years. Guest Helen Vardakis shares her family’s escape in 1922 from Kemal’s blueprint for genocide.
1922 The Destruction of Smyrna