Athens

The Olympic Rowing and Canoeing Centre is actually in Schinias, about 4 kilometers from the site of the Tomb of Marathon, the epicenter of the historic battle (Commentary, Aug. 13). Both are in the municipality of Marathonas, an area of about 38 square miles, but they are at different sites. E.G. Vallianatos is correct to point out that Schinias is a rare wetland area that deserves protection. We strongly agree. In 1923, the area was drained, and the natural spring that fed the wetlands was rerouted to the sea. The Olympic facility is a means of reintroducing fresh water into the area by a carefully designed lake system fed by the original spring.

Less than 24 hours after declaring a fragile truce, Premier Costas Simitis fired a senior Athens 2004 official for trading insults with a government minister over control of major construction projects for the Olympics. Simitis fired Costas Liaskas, a 2004 executive director. Liaskas, an engineer and former public works minister, is president of the Technical Chamber of Commerce of Greece. In an effort to smother the crisis, Athens 2004 head Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki also demanded Liaskas' resignation after his public exchange of thinly veiled insults with Public Works Minister Costas Laliotis.

Although the 1996 Olympics will be in Atlanta, the marathon race may be run in Athens. International Olympic Committee chairman Juan Antonio Samaranch said Thursday that the group would consider Athens as the site of the marathon, and Robert Helmick, president of the U.S. Olympic Committee, said yesterday that the idea was first presented to the IOC by Andrew Young, then mayor of Atlanta, two years ago. Athens lost out to Atlanta last month...

While Greek organizers were seeking to assure the world that the Athens Games will be safe, anti-Olympics activists firebombed two government vehicles yesterday to coincide with a major meeting of International Olympic Committee officials. Two environment ministry trucks were set ablaze by cooking gas canisters soaked in gasoline, causing an estimated $37,000 in damages, fire officials said. A group calling itself "Phevos and Athena" - the names of the Olympic mascots - said in a call to an Athens newspaper the attack was tied to the meetings of the IOC and the Association of National Olympic Committees.

Now that another Olympics has come and gone, fortunately without any major disaster - except a controversy about doping, the protests of the Aborigines and the arrogance of a few American athletes - we can turn our thoughts to 2004 when the games return to their original locale, Athens. The International Olympic Committee's retiring (hurrah) president, Juan Antonio Samaranch, is threatening to move the games if the Greek committee doesn't get its act together. I believe we should take another look at how and where they're held.

Alexandra Alevizatos Kirtley is the Montgomery-Garvan Associate Curator of American Decorative Arts at the Philadelphia Museum of Art In the decades after American independence, the atmosphere of liberty in Philadelphia spawned an artistic spirit that earned this city its reputation as the Athens of America. Here, enthusiasm for the arts grew with the same fervor and in the same houses, streets, and shops where the seeds of political freedom had been sown and cultivated a generation earlier.

Athens, Ga. Inside/Out is a lively snatch of local color from the college town that has been home to generations of folk artists and musicians - from the devout painter, the Rev. Howard Finster to that irreverent band the B- 52s. Though it lacks what might be called a coherent thesis, this rock-and-roll potpourri is an Intro to Pop Culture 101 that pulses to the beats of different local drummers. It focuses not so much on regional landmarks like the town's Greek revival architecture, but rather on places like Walter's Bar-B-Q, a pit stop of a motley style frequented by Athens' local heroes, R.E.M.

I met up quite by chance with Dionysus, the god of theater and wine, among other things. It was on a recent Sunday, after I'd just arrived in Athens on an unusually warm winter day. My jet lag probably led me to Dionysus. I decided, 16 hours after I'd left Philadelphia and finally touched down, to climb the Acropolis. I was too tired to focus on a map - travelers, you know the feeling - so I ended up scaling the wrong side. I climbed and climbed, up narrow streets leading to the revered ancient Athens hilltop, having started out in the almost-as-ancient Plaka neighborhood - Athens' version of Old City, only way older.

When the U.S. Olympic team entered the stadium at the Games' opening ceremonies here, there was polite applause. When the Iraqis emerged, there was foot-stomping and cheering, and a few standing ovations. When the U.S. basketball team played its first game, against Puerto Rico, on Aug. 15, there was little doubt whom the crowd wanted to win - and it wasn't the Dream Team. And when two top Greek runners were involved in a doping scandal, while Greeks did not excuse their behavior, some were sure that larger (i.e.

Middle-distance events don't produce much bulletin-board material. Trash talk in the 1,500 meters typically is as rare as contestants with love handles. So when top qualifier Michael Stember predicted that, despite Alan Webb, he would be next to impossible to beat yesterday in the men's 1,500-meter final, the event became much more than a race. That's probably why, after a spectacular mid-race burst put away Stember and the rest of the field at the U.S Olympic track and field trials and earned him a berth in Athens, Webb was hooting and howling like Terrell Owens.

Soccer fans are invited to attend the United States women's national team training session on Saturday from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at PPL Park in Chester. The practice is open to the public. Admission and parking are free. Members of the U.S. Soccer Supporters Club will receive premium seating at the session. Fans may join the club at www.ussoccer.com or at the stadium on Saturday. The U.S. women are set to play China on Sunday at 7 p.m. at PPL Park as they continue to prepare for the 2012 London Olympics after winning the CONCACAF women's Olympic qualifying tournament last January.

Greek opinion is divided over the government's plan to offer the Parthenon and other heritage sites as film and photo backdrops to raise revenue during the country's current economic crisis. "This is sacrilege!" one Greek tour guide protested. But others thought that, humbling though the measure might be, it was at least better than begging for foreign bailouts. For some Greeks, the debate may have evoked a sense of deja vu. Pericles, the great Athenian statesman, also proposed raiding the Parthenon to meet a shortfall nearly 2,500 years ago - challenging the boundaries not just of good taste but of religious taboo.

European officials jacked up the pressure on the Greek government Tuesday to deliver budget cuts in exchange for a second bailout as they insisted that default was not an option. Finance ministers canceled a Brussels, Belgium, meeting slated for Wednesday and will hold a teleconference instead to prod Greece to do more to clinch an aid package worth 130 billion euros ($170 billion) along with roughly $130 billion of debt relief from private bondholders. "I did not yet receive the required political assurances from the leaders of the Greek coalition parties on the implementation of the program," Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, chairman of the euro finance panel, said in a statement Tuesday.

Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and author of the just-released The End of Sparta In Greek mythology, the prophetess Cassandra was doomed both to tell the truth and to be ignored. Our modern version is a bankrupt Greece that we seem to discount. News accounts abound now of impoverished Athens residents scrounging pharmacies for scarce aspirin - as Greece is squeezed to make interest payments to the supposedly euro-pinching German banks.

ATHENS, Greece - Greece was in turmoil and the world economy in limbo Thursday as political brinkmanship in Athens led Prime Minister George Papandreou to abandon his explosive plan to put a European rescue deal to a referendum. The developments overshadowed the G20 summit of world leaders in the French resort of Cannes, where President Obama implored European leaders to work out a eurozone plan quickly to deal with the continent's crisis, which threatens to push the world back into recession.

Temple women's rowing coach Jason Read has been selected to carry Team USA's flag in the Opening Ceremony of the XVI Pan American Games in Guadalajara, Mexico. Read, an Olympic gold medalist in the men's eights at the 2004 Athens Games, will compete in the men's fours and eights in Mexico. The Pan Am Games begin tomorrow and run until Oct.30. "I've been fortunate as an athlete to achieve a great deal, but this is something entirely different," said Read, who was named the Owls' coach this fall.

Alexandra Alevizatos Kirtley is the Montgomery-Garvan Associate Curator of American Decorative Arts at the Philadelphia Museum of Art In the decades after American independence, the atmosphere of liberty in Philadelphia spawned an artistic spirit that earned this city its reputation as the Athens of America. Here, enthusiasm for the arts grew with the same fervor and in the same houses, streets, and shops where the seeds of political freedom had been sown and cultivated a generation earlier.

ATHENS, Greece - They descended by the hundreds - black-shirted, bat-wielding youths chasing down dark-skinned immigrants through the streets of Athens and beating them senseless in a show of force by Greece's far-right extremists. In Greece, alarm is rising that the financial meltdown and soaring illegal immigration are creating the conditions for a right-wing rise - and the massacre in Norway drove authorities Monday to beef up security. The move comes amid social unrest that has unleashed rioting and vigilante thuggery on the streets of Athens.

NEW YORK - The world championships are a big deal to most of the countries that play basketball. It has never been a particularly big deal in the United States. The Olympics have always been the tournament to Americans. And you can tell the emphasis by the records. The USA has won just three of 15 world championships since they were first contested in 1950. The all-time record is 105-27. The USA has won 13 of 16 Olympic golds. The all-time record is 122-5. The 2010 U.S. team for the world championships leaves tomorrow for Madrid, where it will play two exhibition games and train before it goes to Athens for more training and another exhibition.

Sometimes, as they say, you had to be there. The ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus was there. He witnessed a piece of the Persian wars against Greece - in fact, he was a soldier - and he spun one pivotal battle into what historians label the world's oldest surviving play. The Persians, being staged by People's Light & Theatre Company in a stiff modern version that reflects the way Aeschylus wrote it, opened in Athens 2,480 years ago. It was part of a trilogy staged at the festival dedicated to the god of theater, Dionysius, where it won first prize.