Durham E-Theses Urban tourism in Athens: tourist myths and images Travlou, Spyridoula Penny How to cite: Travlou, Spyridoula Penny (2000) Urban tourism in Athens: tourist myths and images, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/4521/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk URBAN TOURISM IN ATHENS: TOURIST MYTHS AND IMAGES SPYRIDOULA PENNY TRAVLOU The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published in any form, including Electronic and the Internet, without the author's prior written consent. AH information derived from this thesis must be acknowledged appropriately. Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Department of Geography, University of Durham December 2000 Declaration I declare that the work presented in this thesis is my own, unless stated otherwise. Spyridoula Penny Travlou Urban Tourism in Athens: Tourist Mytlis and Images Doctor of Philosophy January 2001 This thesis explores and analyses the mythical quality of modem Athens as experienced by tourists. It is an exploration of the tourist gaze upon the Athenian landscape, as well as an account of how tourists narrate its urban mythology. This research is largely concerned with the relationship of time and space through memory, exploring the interplay between the spatial arrangement of urban elements, temporality and the experience of the city. Athens is viewed as a city marked by a temporal collage where different historical periods are juxtaposed. This juxtaposition gives Athens the character of a deconstructed city. The city is made present through spatialised remainders, her genius loci. This thesis thus analyses the relationship between Athens past and the present, the strangely familiar and the stereotypically exotic, as interwoven within an urban landscape imagined, gazed and finally, narrated by foreign tourists. The core argument of this work is that the Athenian landscape embodies an urban mythology constructed by the nineteenth century romantic travellers: these, through their writings, fashioned the stereotypical imagery of Athens. Modem tourists are the consumers of these myths. Like their nineteenth century predecessors, tourists stroll around the city following the traces of their memory - key landmarks and symbols, recognising what they have already known; feeling nostalgic for the past -their past, fragmenting the landscape into different historic layers, depopulating it from its present inhabitants, orientalising it. In this work I explore the transmission and reinvention of the myths of Athens through guidebooks, travel brochures, guided tours and tourist photographs. The exploration of the different images of Athens as visualised by tourists leads to a discussion of gendered, orientalised, literary, photographic and cartographic aspects of the Athenian urban landscape. The theoretical framework of the thesis is based on post-modemism, post-stmcturalism and semiotics. My research methods have been qualitative, including both in-depth interviews and participant observation, following tourists around the city and participating in their activities. I also analysed the ways tourists 'gaze' and photograph the city. My intention is to draw -metaphorically speaking- a mental map including the sites visited, consumed and experienced by tourists. Acknowledgements ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis was partly funded by the ESRC and the Department of Geography, University of Durham. I am grateful to both organisations; without their financial support it would have been too difficult for me to carry out this research. My fieldwork in Athens was funded by the Erasmus/Socrates Educational Program of the European Community. I want to thank many people for their help and support during the research for and writing of this thesis. My greatest debt is to my supervisors, Dr. Mike Crang and Professor Ray Hudson, whose academic and moral support was of the greatest importance to me, I am deeply thankful to Mike for our long conversations, which really stimulated my intellectual interests and expanded my knowledge in many aspects of cultural geography. I also thank him for being so patient and understanding during the final year of the thesis which was a very difficult time for me. Without his encouragement and support I do not think this thesis would have been completed. As for Ray, I am indebted to him for trying very hard to keep timetables, something that did not work all the time, and also for sorting out administrative and financial issues. I am also grateful to those scholars in Athens who gave me support and advice in many different ways. Professor Dina Vaiou (NTUA) for helping me to deal with all these trivial administrative issues in relation to my Erasmus status. Professor Sofia Avgerinou-Kolonia (NTUA) gave me the opportunity to participate in two major research projects on urban tourism in Athens and introduced me to key-informants in Ministries and tourist organisations. My fieldwork would have been very difficult without her assistance and advice. Professor Paris Tsartas (University of the Aegean) deserves special thanks for sharing with me his expertise on Greek tourism. Finally, I appreciate the kindness of Dr. Loukia Droulia and Dr. George Tolias (National Centre of Neo-Hellenic Studies) who advised me on nineteenth century romantic travellers and guidebooks and who also lent me valuable and rare books. Many thanks also to Katerina Leivadara and Efi Sarantakou; working with them at NTUA was great fun! Acknowledgements I wish to offer many thanks to all those people who agreed to participate in my research. My greatest debt is to all those tourists I interviewed and who were so kind to spend part of their spare time in Athens with me, answering to my probably boring and often indiscreet questions. I am also very thankful to all the key-informants who gave me access to valuable information and data. I thank the tour-operators Giannis Votsis and George Tsilidis, the hotel owners of Dorian Iim Hotel and Students'Inn Hostel, the tour-leaders Eirene and Lynn, and Antonis Kremmydas at the Ministry of Urban Planning and Environment. Words are not enough to express my gratitude to my family and friends who supported me in all possible ways during the progress of this thesis; to Stathis, Dina, Panagis and Tasia, whose patience and support, love and kindness are beyond description. I feel really sorry that I did not spend more time with them in difficult periods. I also thank all these friends I left behind in Athens and who spent so much effort to keep in touch with me: Vassilis, Hara, Chrisfina S., Leonidas, Alexandra, Stathis. Of course, I thank, too, all my fiiends here in Britain and whose company and warm friendship kept me going: Christina K., George, Joanna, Yi-Hsien, Barbara M., Dinos, Boris, Giannis, Photini, Fergus, Henry in Durham and Nadja, Vaggelis, Maria, Khalil, Cahit, Barbara B., Christos, Jamie in Edinburgh. Special thanks to Gregoris not only for the hundred of photocopies he did for me but for the long and sfimulating conversations we had all these years. My flatmates in Shinding Co-Op in Edinburgh deserve many thanks for their patience and interest for my emofional and physical well-being. Finally, I should be thankful to my friend Nikos for his proof-reading and help in completing my thesis, but most of all for his creative imagination and original ideas. Even in bad times, he made me remember that we are fellow-travellers. Contents CONTENTS Page PROLOGUE 1 CHAPTER 1: URBAN TOURISM IN ATHENS 12 1.1. hitroducfion 1.2. Mapping Tourism in European Cities 1.3. Defining Cultural/ Urban Tourism in Europe 1.4. Urban Tourism in Europe 1.5. Defining Urban Tourism in Athens 1.5.1. 1950- 1975 1.5.2. 1975 - 1998 1.6. The Tourist Resources and lufi-astructure in Athens 1.6.1 Primary Elements 1.6.2 Secondary Elements 1.6.3 Amusement Facilities in Athens 1.7. Conclusion: Redefining Urban Tourism in Athens CHAPTER 2: THE INVENTION OF URBAN MYTHOLOGY 38 2.1. Introducfion 2.2. The Symbolic Landscape as Cultural Text 2.3. Defining the Discourse of the Symbolic Landscape: Mythology 2.4. The Cosmogonic Myth of the Western Civihsation: The Greek Ideal 2.5. The Rebirth of the Cosmogonic Myth: Phillhellenism 2.6. The Myths of the Athenian Landscape 2.6.1. Nostalgia 2.6.2. Memories in Absentia 2.6.3. The Fragmentation of the Landscape 2.6.4. The Depopulation of the Landscape Contents 2.6.5. Greece as the Latin Orient 2.7. Two Narrative Paradigms on Greece 2.7.1. The Myth of the Dead People: Chateaubriand in Greece 2.7.2. The Myth of the Empty Space: Flaubert in Greece 2.8. The Aftermath of the Cosmogonic Myth: Tourism CHAPTER 3: THE CONSTRUCTION OF MODERN ATHENS 65 AND THE CREATION OF ITS TOURIST IMAGE 3.1. Introduction 3.2. The Present Image of Athens: The Spectre of the Past 3.3. The Recent Past 3.3.1. 1834: The Reincamafion of Athens 3.3.2. 1930-1970: Demohshing Modem Athens 3.4. The Present 3.4.1.