DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.803#0019
TOPOGRAPHY" OF ATHENS. 13
than any other monument of Athens to call up those
associations with which we have been long fami-
liarized. The town was very lately a heap of ruins,
and nearly depopulated; but we are informed that
at this moment building is going on rapidly in that
part of the city which is north of the Acropolis.
During the last revolutionary war the Greeks were
besieged in the Acropolis by the Turks, who held the
town; and while the fire of one party almost destroyed
the mean buildings of the modern city, that of the
assailants damaged the venerable edifices which crown
the Acropolis.
There is one spot in Athens, which nature has
marked in such a manner that we recognize it at
once. Stuart, describing modern Athens, says, " One
principal feature cannot be mistaken; I mean an in-
sulated rock, the site of the Acropolis. It is about
a hundred and fifty feet in height, and in length upon
its surface, which is nearly level, from nine hundred
to a thousand feet; whilst its sides are every where
a precipice, the western extremity alone excepted,
where with no small labour and diligence the en-
trance has been constructed."
But the real situation of Athens cannot be well un-
derstood without a brief notice of the mountain ranges
and plains of Attica. The great spine of the Grecian
peninsula, which has a general direction from north
to south, divides itself south of Thebes into two main
branches: one runs towards the Isthmus of Corinth
filling up a great part of the land between the bays of
Corinth and iEgina; the other takes a direction nearly
due east, and forms a barrier between the rich valley
of the Asopus and the less fertile district of Attica.
The region bounded by this mountain range on the
north and west, and by the sea on the east, south,
and south-east, is of a triangular shape; it is full of
hills of moderate elevation, with a few tolerably fertile
vox.. I, c
than any other monument of Athens to call up those
associations with which we have been long fami-
liarized. The town was very lately a heap of ruins,
and nearly depopulated; but we are informed that
at this moment building is going on rapidly in that
part of the city which is north of the Acropolis.
During the last revolutionary war the Greeks were
besieged in the Acropolis by the Turks, who held the
town; and while the fire of one party almost destroyed
the mean buildings of the modern city, that of the
assailants damaged the venerable edifices which crown
the Acropolis.
There is one spot in Athens, which nature has
marked in such a manner that we recognize it at
once. Stuart, describing modern Athens, says, " One
principal feature cannot be mistaken; I mean an in-
sulated rock, the site of the Acropolis. It is about
a hundred and fifty feet in height, and in length upon
its surface, which is nearly level, from nine hundred
to a thousand feet; whilst its sides are every where
a precipice, the western extremity alone excepted,
where with no small labour and diligence the en-
trance has been constructed."
But the real situation of Athens cannot be well un-
derstood without a brief notice of the mountain ranges
and plains of Attica. The great spine of the Grecian
peninsula, which has a general direction from north
to south, divides itself south of Thebes into two main
branches: one runs towards the Isthmus of Corinth
filling up a great part of the land between the bays of
Corinth and iEgina; the other takes a direction nearly
due east, and forms a barrier between the rich valley
of the Asopus and the less fertile district of Attica.
The region bounded by this mountain range on the
north and west, and by the sea on the east, south,
and south-east, is of a triangular shape; it is full of
hills of moderate elevation, with a few tolerably fertile
vox.. I, c