Athens, Greece’s sunkissed capital, has been named as the Emerging Cultural City of the Year for 2017 at the Leading Culture Destinations Award in London last Friday. The Greek capital was lauded for managing to a maintain a thriving cultural scene despite the country’s protracted financial crisis with lots of various initiatives taking place in the last few months.
Big infrastructure projects such as the newly built Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Centre, house to the new National Opera and National Library apart from its beautiful lush gardens and park, has attracted numerous visitors both inside and outside Greece. Other projects like the new Goulandris Museum of Contemporary Art in downtown Pangrati is also due for completion in early 2018, and the new Faliro waterfront soon to hopefully get work underway.
Apart form that, Greece has also formed an alliance with China for exchanging culture and art exhibits within the year. Tapping into the cultural cache of their respective ancient civilisations, an exhibit swap will see the Acropolis Museum sending a marble sculpture and a piece of pottery from antiquity to the Shanghai Museum in exchange for a Qing Dynasty painting and a bronze wash basin to be displayed until April 2018.
Source: e-Kathimerini
