Despite Austerity, Athens Completely Revamps Its Downtown

Struggling Athens is perhaps the last place you’d expect to attempt a large-scale urban renaissance. Portrayed worldwide as the ultimate recession basket case, the city is capital of a country where money is hard to find for basic services, let alone for infrastructure projects and new cultural complexes.

It’s something of a surprise then to discover that Athens is planning a major cultural and aesthetic overhaul. Coming up next spring is a new Museum of Contemporary Art, housed in a gutted and revamped city center brewery, while a museum of underwater antiquities is also planned, part of a broader project in the Athens harbor district of Piraeus called the Cultural Coast. Located in the shell of a former silo, the museum is designed to encourage visitors catching ferries to the islands to stay a little longer, and to bring strollers and diners back to the city’s busy wharves.