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A visit to Athens, Greece
Thursday, June 21. Athens is a modern city, unusually clean for a metropolitan area, but with lots of traffic. Of course, we went to the Parthenon, which is impressive despite the unsightly scaffolding surrounding much of it. Why is all this scaffolding there? Several years ago, someone decided to strengthen the famous structure with iron. Now the iron is rusting onto the aged marble, discoloring it. The current renovation project began about 20 years ago, according to our guide, and won't be finished for about 5 more years. The workers are now replacing the iron with titanium, which doesn't rust. Archaeologists have examined, numbered and categorized every piece of "rubble" around the famous structure, and are putting the pieces back where they were centuries ago, filling in the "blanks" with a white material so it will be easy to tell the new from the old. It was quite hot, about 100 there, as the city is experiencing an unusual heat wave, but at least there was a breeze. |
