Patras, Then and Now

Summary

As the pre-eminent stage on which historical, social and financial changes take place, urban centres undergo constant alterations. The new covers the old and today rapidly erases the memory of what went before. Still, some features of the urban fabric, wherever they have been preserved in their initial form, either deliberately or haphazarly, constitute points of reference to the city's history. In Greece especially, modern cities are only mildly reminiscent of their past, owing to the changes they have suffered as a result of the unbridled impulse to demolish and the rampant construction characteristic of the postwar decades. How would it be possible for their contemporary inhabitants, most of whom are newcomers, to say nothing of hurried visitors, to recreate the face of these cities as they were a century or so ago? [...] (Fani Constantinou)