On September 2, 31 BC, Octavian’s forces defeat those of Mark Antony and the queen of Egypt Cleopatra off the western coast of Greece. The battle is known as the Battle of Actium, after the name of the peninsula at the entrance of the Ambracian Gulf, where an ancient sanctuary to Apollo existed. Few episodes...
Δεκάξι ιστορίες από τα Καμίνια, τη Νίκαια, τη Δραπετσώνα. Από τον ντόκο των Κρητικών, από το ουζερί "Υπάρχω", από το φουγάρο της ΔΕΗ στο Κερατσίνι. Ιστορίες για τράπεζες που παίρνουν σπίτια, για σπίτια που παίρνουν φωτιά, για όνειρα που γίνονται στάχτη. Για το σκοτάδι που ζει στη διπλανή πόρτα. Κάτι θα γίνει όμως, θα δεις....
For more than a decade, Artemis Leontis has carried out a recovery project researching and writing the life of Eva Palmer Sikelianos, publishing her biography in 2019. Leontis knew Palmer as a shadowy figure in Greek cultural history, known mostly as the wealthy American wife of the Greek poet Angelos Sikelianos, who spent all her...
Local Greek women’s costumes are impressive because of their wide variety and large number of local variations. A more methodical analysis can bring to the surface certain common characteristics and will help the careful observer to identify from among these varieties the basic styles and main influences that contributed to their creation. The vicissitudes of...
The image of a small church with immured ceramic vessels on its walls is interwoven with representations of the Greek landscape, whether on the islands or on the mainland. The practice of decorating church façades with brightly decorated vessels is older than the 16th century and the Ottoman period in Greece, and is related to...
Christos or Christian Zervos (Argostoli 1889–Paris 1970) played a definitive role in shaping the cultural climate in interwar Paris through his journal Cahiers d’Αrt, which he founded in 1926 and published until 1960. It was one of the longest-lived modernist journals, which numbered 97 issues. As early as the first issue, Cahiers d’Αrt had focused...
The year 2021 marks the bicentenary of the 1821 declaration of the Greek War of Independence. To celebrate this major anniversary, the Benaki Museum, together with the Bank of Greece, the National Bank of Greece, and ALPHABANK are mounting a major exhibition of works of art and historical testimonies under the title “1821, Before and...
“Ενα πρωί βρήκα τα υπολείμματα των ημερών σου, είδα τις πατημασιές σου στην ερπετώδη γη, άκουσα πάλι την αναπνοή σου: στα ρημαγμένα τοπία, στη μακάβρια αταξία, σε είδα να γίνεσαι ένας άνθρωπος ασυνήθιστα συνηθισμένος. Ηθελα να σου φωνάξω πως όταν σε βρήκα ήσουν ήδη χαμένος, όμως, δεν σου είπα τίποτα· έμεινα να σε κοιτάζω με...
Join the UCLA SNF Center and the Museum of Cycladic Art, Athens, for an inside look into the Museum’s unparalleled collection of Cycladic art. Go behind the scenes to view figurines, vases, tools, weapons, and pottery from all phases of the distinctive Cycladic island culture that flourished in the central Aegean during the Early Bronze...
With a new museum and hospital underway, and with plans for a new airport, the city of Sparta is undergoing dramatic changes. In this wide-ranging conversation, UCLA SNF Hellenic Center Director Sharon Gerstel and Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, Associate Dean of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning, chat with...
Marcia Haddad Ikonomopoulos gives us a virtual tour of Kehila Kedosha Janina, the only Romaniote synagogue in the Western Hemisphere. The congregation was founded in 1906 by Greek Jewish immigrants from Ioannina, but the synagogue itself was not erected until 1927. The years from then until the Second World War were a time of prosperity...
This lecture will discuss the destruction of Thessaloniki’s ancient and vast Jewish cemetery which commenced in December 1942. The cemetery, located close to the city center, had long become the object of a dispute between the Christian and Jewish communities, with the former wishing to expropriate it in favor of the city’s new University and...