Our society can be evaluated by the way our cities have expanded and by the production of their built environment. Since the beginning of the modern state, Athens, our capital city, has served as an example for the reproduction of similar city replicas.
Another expression of the altered faces of our urban centers, shaped through internal immigration, is reflected in urban archaeology — a widely accepted phenomenon throughout the developed western European countries today- apart from our historic monuments dating since Antiquity. The idea of the unification of the archaeological sites, as it has been conceived by scholars and by those who supervised this project, goes beyond the original meaning of the word “unification”. Here, the unification simply aims to secure any pedestrian visiting the major antiquities of Athens, or just walking somewhere,a vehicle-free itinerary from one archaeological site to another, from the Ardyttus hill to Plato’s Academy.
From this point a lot of faultless work is necessary and above all a plan and the organisation of the whole project, something that no public service seems to possess today. Therefore, a special public organisation is needed which will chanel the relevant financial resources to the works and not to the continuously increasing functional expenses. The leadership of the Ministry of Culture has obviously the responsibility to search for it or to create it as soon as possible. Needless to say that the role played by the Archaeological Service must be the right one.
