From the Athens of the North to the Edinburgh of the South

The National

14 hours ago

Until I first went to the Greek capital, I presumed it was just for all the hills and the capital's penchant for aping Greek classical architecture. Across half a dozen visits, I have unearthed deeper parallels alongside those surface similarities.
That connection comes from the Golden Age of Athens in the fifth century BC when the settlement grew exponentially around the sacred rock of the Acropolis. Prosaically the site was chosen for the easy-to-defend heights it offered and the fresh spring water, but on a visceral level, the Acropolis was an icon you could see from anywhere in the city, which you could feel the presence of anywhere.
This omnipresence was critical in the influence that the great thinkers of the Acropolis and Ancient Athens developed. The Acropolis became a beacon, well named as the 'Cradle of Western Civilisation' for the free-thinking ideas that emanated from here – heady ideas of democracy and freedom that still underpin the Western world today.
These are ideas, of course, that are always vulnerable to populism, dictatorship and concentration of power. The message of the Acropolis has, then, scarcely been more essential.
As dark clouds circle our modern world, there is talk of fascism in many guises. Athens, of course, has seen it all before. And not just centuries before the birth of Christ. In the Second World War, the German occupation was so savage that in the winter of 1941-2, it's said around 2000 Athenians perished from hunger every single day.
The Scottish capital was spared Nazi occupation, but the similarity with Athens comes in the city representing something bigger than itself centuries after Athens espoused democracy and the development of the arts as being beneficial to mankind. It came when the Scottish Enlightenment lit a similar fire that soon raged across a continent. It was Voltaire who said: 'We look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilisation.'
Physically, Edinburgh is fond of its Ionic and Doric columns, but the connection with Athens runs far beyond the Adam family and their architectural cohorts. Edinburgh is a city that forces us to think about what cities are and to think about what we are.
Edinburgh even has its own Acropolis in Calton Hill, a mound long associated with paganism and Scottish identity, spirit and independence in many forms.
When the site was being chosen for the devolved Scottish Parliament, I remember rumours that it wasn't allowed on or around Calton Hill for its associations with Scottishness and independence in a wider sense.
Whatever the truth, Calton Hill still remains a defiant place, home to a fire festival in the run up to Hogmanay that evokes the pagan side of the city beyond just the commercialism of Hogmanay. Then there are the summer solstice festivities, a sublime experience if you've not been. Our Parthenon, the National Monument, with its suitably grand columns, was never finished, fitting perhaps for a nation still in stasis.
Athens is a city like Edinburgh that likes to celebrate too, but there is no 'pack it away until next year end of Edinburgh Festivals downer' in the Greek capital. Athenians celebrates life year round, still remarkably resilient on my latest visit last week even after the economic horrors they've faced over the last few decades.
My base on this visit is the Titania Hotel Athens, which reminds me of Edinburgh's Caledonian with its view of the city's crucial citadel. The celebrations continue here in their rooftop Olive Garden restaurant with a flourish Dionysus would have been proud of, with freshly grilled Aegean sea bass and delicious seafood pasta washed down by a bone-dry local wine and epic views out to the floodlit Acropolis.
It's easy to eat like a Greek god in Athens. And I dine spectacularly again at GB Roof Garden. There is another terrace with a breathtaking Acropolis view. The menu again shines with the likes of Angus ribeye, fried cuttlefish with chargrilled lobster and a perfectly cooked monkfish dish with a mussel and champagne sauce.
I'd already returned to the Acropolis at the start of my visit, but I cannot resist going back on a guided tour to see if I can uncover any new nuggets. The tour starts well when our group's guide points out a hero of Greek independence, who she describes as wearing 'not a dress or a skirt, but something much more manly, like a Scottish kilt'.
We pass the Theatre of Dionysus, where plays once spread the lofty ideas of Athens, and the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, much more dramatic than my local Odeon, but of the same lineage. As is so much of our culture and language across Scotland.
And it is of Edinburgh I think of when I finally stand up here again with the gods amidst the Parthenon, the Temple of Athena Nike and the Erechtheion dreaming of ideas much beyond the prosaic. I'm thinking too of that sense of Enlightenment that the world has perhaps never needed more, and of two cities that, at their best, still shine so brightly.
EasyJet flies from Edinburgh to Athens