The first modern city plan consisted of a triangle defined by the Acropolis, the ancient cemetery of

The city of Athens has a population of 655,780 (796,442 back in 2004) within traveling nurse opportunities its administrative limits and a land area of 39 km2 (15 sq mi). The urban area of Athens traveling nurse opportunities (Greater Athens and Greater Piraeus) extends beyond the administrative municipal city limits, with a population of 3,074,160 (in 2011), over an area of 412 km2 (159 sq mi). According to Eurostat, the Athens Larger Urban Zone (LUZ) is the 7th most populous LUZ in the European Union (the 4th most populous capital traveling nurse opportunities city of the EU) with a population of 4,013,368 (in 2004). Athens is also the southernmost capital on the European mainland.  spanning around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state. A centre for the arts, learning and philosophy, traveling nurse opportunities home of Plato s Academy and Aristotle s Lyceum, it is widely referred to as the cradle traveling nurse opportunities of Western civilization and the birthplace traveling nurse opportunities of democracy, largely due to the impact of its cultural and political achievements during the 5th and 4th centuries BC on the rest of the then known European continent. Today a cosmopolitan metropolis, modern Athens is central to economic, financial, industrial, political and cultural life in Greece. In 2008, Athens was ranked the world s 32nd richest city by purchasing power[7] and the 25th most expensive[8] traveling nurse opportunities in a UBS study.
The heritage of the classical era is still evident in the city, represented by a number of ancient monuments and works of art, the most famous of all being the Parthenon, widely considered a key landmark of early Western civilization. The city also retains a vast variety traveling nurse opportunities of Roman and Byzantine monuments, as well as a smaller number of remaining Ottoman monuments projecting the city s long history traveling nurse opportunities across the centuries. Athens is home to two UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the Acropolis of Athens traveling nurse opportunities and the medieval Daphni Monastery. traveling nurse opportunities Landmarks of the modern era, dating back to the establishment of Athens as the capital of the independent Greek state in 1833, include the Hellenic Parliament (19th century) and the Athens Trilogy consisting of the National Library of Greece, the Athens traveling nurse opportunities University and the Academy of Athens. Athens was the host city of the first modern-day Olympic Games in 1896, and 108 years later it welcomed home the 2004 Summer Olympics. traveling nurse opportunities Athens is home to the National Archeological traveling nurse opportunities Museum, featuring the world s largest collection of ancient Greek antiquities, as well as the new Acropolis Museum.
The oldest known human presence traveling nurse opportunities in Athens is the Cave of Schist, which has been dated to between the 11th and 7th millennium BC.[17] Athens has been continuously inhabited for at least 7000 years.[18][19] By 1400 BC the settlement had become an important centre of the Mycenaean civilization and the Acropolis was the site of a major Mycenaean traveling nurse opportunities fortress, whose remains can be recognised traveling nurse opportunities from sections of the characteristic Cyclopean walls.[20] Unlike other Mycenaean centers, such as Mycenae and Pylos, it is not known whether Athens suffered destruction in about 1200 BC, an event often attributed to a Dorian invasion, and the Athenians always maintained that they were pure Ionians with no Dorian element. However, Athens, like many other Bronze Age settlements, went into economic decline for around 150 years following this.
Iron Age burials, in the Kerameikos and other locations, are often richly provided for and demonstrate that from 900 BC onwards Athens was one of the leading centers of trade and prosperity in the region.[21] The leading position of Athens may well have resulted from its central location in the Greek world, its secure stronghold on the Acropolis and its access to the sea, which gave it a natural advantage over inland rivals such as Thebes and Sparta.
By the 6th century BC, widespread traveling nurse opportunities social unrest led to the reforms of Solon. These would pave the way for the eventual introduction of democracy by Cleisthenes in 508 BC. Athens had by this time become a significant naval power with a large fleet, and helped the rebellion of the Ionian cities against Persian rule. In the ensuing Greco-Persian Wars Athens, together with Sparta, led the coalition of Greek states that repelled the Persians, defeating them decisively at Marathon in 490 BC and crucially at Salamis in 480 BC.
The decades that followed became known as the Golden Age of Athenian democracy, during which time Athens became the leading city of Ancient Greece, with its cultural achievements laying the foundations of Western civilization. The playwrights traveling nurse opportunities Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides flourished in Athens during this time, as did the historians Herodotus and Thucydides, the physician traveling nurse opportunities Hippocrates, and the philosopher Socrates.
Guided by Pericles, who promoted the arts and fostered democracy, Athens embarked on an ambitious building program that saw the construction of the Acropolis of Athens (including the Parthenon), as well as empire-building via the Delian League. Originally intended as an association of Greek city-states to continue the fight against the Persians, the league soon turned into a vehicle for Athens s own imperial ambitions. The resulting tensions brought about the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC), in which Athens was defeated by its rival Sparta.
By the end of Late Antiquity the city experienced decline followed by recovery in the second half of the Middle Byzantine Period, in the 9th to 10th centuries AD, and was relatively prosperous traveling nurse opportunities during the Crusades, benefiting from Italian trade. In 1458 it was conquered by the Ottoman traveling nurse opportunities Empire and entered a long period of decline.
Following the Greek War of Independence, Athens was chosen as the capital of the newly independent Greek state in 1834, largely due to historical and sentimental reasons. At the time it was a town of modest size built around the foot of the Acropolis. The first King of Greece, Otto of Bavaria, commissioned the architects Stamatios Kleanthis and Gustav Schaubert to design a modern city plan fit for the capital of a state.
The first modern city plan consisted of a triangle defined by the Acropolis, the ancient cemetery of Kerameikos and the new palace of the Bavarian king (now housing the Greek Parliament), so as to highlight the continuity between modern and ancient Athens. Neoclassicism, the international style of this epoch, was the architectural style through which Bavarian, French and Greek architects such as Hansen, traveling nurse opportunities Klenze, Boulanger or Kaftantzoglou designed the first important public buildings of the new capital. In 1896 Athens hosted the first modern Olympic Games. During the 1920s a number of Greek refugees, expelled from Asia Minor after the Greco-Turkish traveling nurse opportunities War (1919-1922), swelled Athens s population; nevertheless it was most particularly following World War II, and from the 1950s and 1960s, that the population of the city exploded, and Athens experienced a gradual expansion in all directions. In the 1980s it became evident that smog from factories and an ever increasing fleet of automobiles, as well as a lack of adequate free space due to congestion, had evolved into the city s most important challenge. A series traveling nurse opportunities of anti-pollution measures taken by the city s authorities in the 1990s, combined with a substantial improvement of the city s infrastructure (including the Attiki Odos motorway, the expansion of the Athens Metro, and the new Athens International Airport), considerably alleviated pollution and transformed Athens traveling nurse opportunities into a much more functional city. In 2004 Athens hosted the 2004 Summer Olympics with great success.
The city of Athens contains traveling nurse opportunities within it a variety of different traveling nurse opportunities architectural styles, ranging from Greco-Roman and Neo-Classical traveling nurse opportunities to modern. They are often to be found in the same areas, as Athens is not marked by a uniformity traveling nurse opportunities of architectural style. Many of the most prominent buildings of the city are either Greco-Roman or neo-classical in styling. Some of the neo-classical structures to be found are public buildings erected during the mid-19th century, under the guidance of Theophil Freiherr von Hansen and Ernst Ziller, and include the Athens Academy, Athens City Hall, the Greek Parliament, the Old Parliament (1875–1932) (Now the National Historical Museum),[50] the University of Athens, and the Zappeion Hall.
Beginning in the 1920s, Modern architecture including Bauhaus and Art Deco began to exert an influence on almost all Greek architects, and many buildings both public and private were constructed in accordance with these styles. Localities with a great number of such buildings include Kolonaki, and some areas of the centre of the city; neighbourhoods developed in this period include Kypseli.[51]
In the 1950s and 1960s during the vast extension and development of Athens, other modern movements such as the International traveling nurse opportunities style played an important traveling nurse opportunities role. The centre of Athens was largely rebuilt, leading to the demolition of a number of neoclassical buildings. The architects of this era employed materials such as glass, marble and aluminium, and many blended modern and classical elements.[52] After World War II, internationally known architects to have designed and built in the city included Walter Gropius, with his design for the US Embassy, and, amongst others, Eero Saarinen, in his postwar design for the east terminal of the Ellinikon Airport.