At risk of being overrun, the Acropolis will be protected by a crowd control system that will include time slots and electronic ticketing and plans will include more shade and water for those waiting in the heat in the long Waiting lines.
The famous ancient site has seen a dramatic increase in visitor numbers with the COVID-19 pandemic essentially ending and waves of tourists returning to the country that could surpass 30 million, more than three times the population.
Some 17,000 people visit the site each day to see the hill and the famous Parthenon and that number is rising as an expected heatwave approaches that could see temperatures of 104 degrees bake the rocks.
The rush to arrive early and get close to the head of the queue also generated some indiscipline, with guards struggling to deal with the frustration of people, some of whom came halfway around the world to visit the site.
“The measures will be fully implemented by the end of the month,” said Culture Minister Lina Mendoni, a classical archaeologist. “Visits in June and early July alone increased by 80% compared to 2019,” she added, The Guardian reported.
There will also be rapid entry points for organized tourist groups who will have priority and, as officials have indicated, thousands of visitors get off cruise ships docked in the nearby port of Piraeus and head straight to the site.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/09/acropolis-greek-tourists-cruise-ships-athens-controls
The hope is that having one system instead of a free-for-all will reduce traffic jams, largely caused by cruise ship traffic that has come roaring back with the pandemic fading in the rearview mirror .
“In the past, these cruise ships had the capacity to transport a few thousand inhabitants, the population of a large village,” Lysandros Tsilidis, president of the Federation of Hellenic Associations of Tourist Agencies and Travel Agencies, told the newspaper. of travel.
He welcomed the measures. “Now the ships are so big that they have on board the size of a small state and at least 30 percent of all these passengers will have pre-purchased tickets to visit the Acropolis,” he said .
He said the country exploded in tourists from the 1970s and with warnings of overtourism, popular islands were also unable to handle those numbers without adequate infrastructure. “No one could have imagined it,” he said.
“No one could have imagined it,” he says. “At the time, Greece attracted 7 million tourists; today, that number exceeds 30 million, three times our population.
The newspaper says tour guides have complained of people fainting in the summer heat in an area where protection cannot be put in place due to the nature of the site which would require changes.
“I gave instructions to find a way to be able to install blinds in places that are not considered sensitive,” said Mendoni, reappointed in the newly re-elected New Democracy government.
“And in discreet places, we will make sure that there is water outside the site,” explained Mendoni, who went there to witness the scenes.
During her first term, she called for concrete paths to be built at the sacred site, drawing the ire of fellow classical archaeologists who called the site sacrilegious but which she defended as necessary to manage crowds. and allow people in wheelchairs to visit it. .
She notes that the overcrowding problem could necessitate changing the entrance, which would likely put her again in the crosshairs of critics who say the government is only interested in money and not history .
“In ancient times, there was more than one entrance,” she explains. “The solution to the bottleneck would be the expansion of the Propylaea (gateway). We cannot demolish the Propylaea but we can widen it,” she added.
Manolis Korres, the architect who heads the Committee for the Conservation of Acropolis Monuments, told the Observer he believed the work would take no more than 10 months if a “well-prepared timetable” was followed.
“I have proposed the reintegration of the Roman staircase into the neighborhood several times and never because I want to facilitate the number of visitors,” he said, with his studies considering a larger entrance to largely match to the original form.
said the professor, whose detailed studies would see the monumental entrance enlarged and renovated to regain much of its original form.
The climb to the treasures – a grueling climb in summer – would also be easier because the slope “would be eight times wider,” said Korres, who the newspaper said is considered the leading authority on the Acropolis.
Mendoni said previous changes were needed, including an elevator. “If we hadn’t built the corridors,” she said, referring to the concrete paths, “the Acropolis today would be an almost impossible monument to visit.”
Read more on thenationalherald.com
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Photo source: Wikimedia Commons License: CC-BY-SA Copyright: Christophe Meneboeuf
