Urban project and archaeology. The redevelopment of the classical Agorà in Athens and the surrounding historical area.

Several years ago the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Toulouse (E.T.S.A.T.) organized a seminar within the Architecture de la Grande Échelle research project. During the event, Yannis Tsiomis made an important contribution to the cultural debate regarding urban planning examining the role of architecture during a time of crisis. This paper brings together those teachings and looks into the specific nature of urban planning in Athens and the relationship that it has with the action of the protection of archaeological heritage at a moment of particular importance for the economic and ideological/cultural factors that above all in recent years have had a strong impact on the dynamics of urban transformation on a national scale The redevelopment of the classical Agorà in Athens and the surrounding historic area - the expression of an indissoluble relationship between thought, work and planning - is not an isolated urban fact, but a proposal resulting from the large scale public project for the construction of a continuous “promenade archéologique” on six sites in the city center: the Ceramico, the classical Agorà, the Roman Agorà, the southern slope of the Acropolis, the Philopappaou and the Olympeìon hill; an ambitious and at times a little romantic proposal which ran into completion difficulties over the years and was only partly completed.