In Athens, now it's healing poetry that's spreading fast

ATHENS, Greece－Under the shadow of eucalyptus trees, gray-haired locals are reading lyrics of Greek poets of the 19th and 20th centuries inscribed on benches, while mothers pushing baby-strollers stop to recite poems "hidden" under small windows on the pavement.

The newly opened Lambraki pedestrian street in the municipality of Glyfada, a southern seaside suburb of Athens, is offering a different experience, with poems of Nobel laureates and others, to residents and visitors suffering from COVID-19 lockdown fatigue.

While Greeks have been stuck at home due to the pandemic, for about two months last spring and six months since Nov 7, 2020, local authorities seized the opportunity to redevelop parks, construct pedestrian bridges over busy avenues and lay down new asphalt on roads.

Running from the lively commercial center vertically to the beach, the pedestrian street in Glyfada has been transformed in recent months from a narrow road packed with cars and a tiny strip of poorly maintained greenery in the middle, to a wide, modern pedestrian path which people now call the "street of poets".

Initial idea

The initial idea of the project was to create a pedestrian like the famous Las Ramblas boulevard in the center of Barcelona in Spain, Giorgos Papanikolaou, the mayor of Glyfada, said in a recent interview.

When architects started mulling where to move the existing two busts of Greece's Nobel laureates for literature, the late poets George Seferis and Odysseas Elytis, the idea of the "street of poets" was born.

The two busts are now more visible, surrounded by a "sea of lyrics "by great representatives of modern Greek poetry like the two Nobel laureates, Kostis Palamas, Constantine Cavafy, Maria Polydouri, Kiki Dimoula, Manolis Anagnostakis, Andreas Kalvos and many others.

"We often talk around the world about our ancient cultural heritage, but we have a great modern Greek (cultural) heritage as well. This is what we want to highlight here," the mayor explained. Since December, sections of the street have gradually opened to the public.

In the coming months, the municipality plans to extend the project across the coastal front and create a four-kilometer route, selecting excerpts of works by foreign writers who loved Greece, Papanikolaou told the national Athens-Macedonian News Agency.

Locals and visitors have warmly welcomed the project. "The image of the most central part of Glyfada indeed changed," said Dimitris Bentos, a resident of the area.

"It is always a great joy and excitement for us seeing that during this period of the pandemic, at times of great difficulties, our fellow citizens are walking here, smiling, reading lyrics," the mayor said.

Xinhua