In early March, an assessment trip to Athens gave
me the great opportunity to realise a wish: to visit The Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Centre, in the sea-side
Phaliron area. This complex, the construction of which
began in 2012, was designed by the Italian architect, Renzo Piano, and built on
a former horse-racing track. It is a beautiful park area - with planting still
on-going – which houses the National
Library of Greece and the Greek
National Library. This 566 million euro project, completed in 2016, was
donated to the Greek state in 2017 by the Niarchos Foundation.
We were
lucky enough to have a beautiful sunny day on our visit: below you can see scenes
of the harbour area and central Athens from this amazing site.
Inside, the
library is impressive – a light, spacious building with thousands of books.
While we were there we saw some young users who were more intent ……. on
catching up on social media posts!
This is the opera house whose canopy is
intended to represent a floating cloud. Several schools groups were visiting,
taking advantage of the fine weather. Below we see some musicians encouraging
passing children to have fun with percussion instruments. Here they are getting
into the rhythm of things!
Stavros
Niarchos was a Greek shipping magnate who died in[U1] Zurich in 1996, leaving a fortune
estimated at around $4 billion. Next to his is the image of Aristotle Onassis,
another famed, Greek shipping magnate. Both built vast empires mainly based on
post-war oil-trading with what were to become huge fleets of super-tankers.
Arch-rivals, they competed with their super-yachts: Niarchos’ Atlantis and Onassis’ Christina, and each had their own island
– Spetsopoula and Skorpios, respectively.
They even vied over their trophy wives. When
Onassis married Tina Livanos, daughter of the great shipping czar, Stavros
Livanos, Niarchos responded by marrying her sister, Evgenia. In 1965, after
divorcing her, Niarchos, aged 56, married the 24-year-old Charlotte, daughter of
Henry Ford, the American captain of industry founder of the Ford Motor Company.
In 1968, Onassis played his trump card in marrying Jacqueline, widow of J.F.
Kennedy.
When
Onassis died in 1975, according to the New York Times, Niarchos was left ‘without
a rival to fire his ambitions’. Don’t
you just love celebrity gossip?
Right across from the Cultural Centre stands
the Onassis Cardiac Surgery Centre,
a state-of-the-art hospital, completed and donated to the state in 1992. For me
it seemed a final irony that their foundations built institutions, legacies to
the Greek people, vying for attention in constant juxtaposition.
Eating
on one’s own on business trips can be a challenge – especially when the
waitress brings you what she calls ‘your wee salad’! So it’s always nice to
have lunch with excellent company, being driven in a brand new Mercedes-Benz
GLA, to a well-known fish restaurant in the beautiful municipality of
Vouliagmeni, which means ‘sunken lake’. After lunch we enjoyed a coffee in the
sunshine at this lake, which has brackish water at a constant temperature of around
24oC and operates as a year-round spa. Wow, this is a life-style I could really
get used to!
Back home. It’s
time to celebrate our birthdays, and the brief return of our beautiful niece,
Konstantina, from Sweden.
We have to
wait another week for the Orthodox one, but in the meantime, for all of you: Have
a very Happy Easter!
