GREECE IN THE CAPITALS OF EUROPE

Warlamis’ idea to show the presence of Greek Culture in major European cities, excited the management of the Bank of Macedonia and Thrace – and later the Piraeus Group – and thus in 1998 this luxurious publication was made.

This is an impressive album that presents with photographic documents the elements of Greek Culture that exist and characterize major European cities.

Warlamis as an architect explains the necessity of the Greek presence in Europe, the dimensions that the phenomenon took and the consequences it had.

As a genuine Greek and European citizen, he analyzes the symbolism of Greek architectural elements and how these are connected to the democratic organization of cities.

It is a documentary book that testifies to why the foundations of the European edifice are Greek Civilization.

he himself writes...

…the universality of Greek art – about which much has been written – its coexistence with other cultures, its reconciliation and its compromising disposition, is indeed a strange phenomenon, which in order to explain it we must resort to the structure of information and the theory of communication. Greek art, despite all its “superiority”, is an archetypal structure of mass communication, timeless and eternal. No other culture maintains this timeless depth, like Greek art, from its first appearance to the present day… …every column, Ionic, Corinthian, Doric is not only a symbol but also a hope that man may be able to respond to his eternal desire for equality, brotherhood and freedom, to secure his personality from egocentrism and individualism and to reach a balance with the public, with values and obligations towards the whole…

E. Warlamis

what did they say…

…in the book in question, the architect Warlamis shows with great skill, the documents of this era and the framework of the phenomenon of Classicism in European cities. It brings us to the realization of how much the foundations of our common European home are based on the tradition of Greek Antiquity, which characteristically predetermined our concepts of culture, democracy and humanism. On these same Greek pillars, the extension of the European Community to all those states that stand for these values and want to realize them with us is also supported.

…these unexploited intellectual rights of Hellenism, which are used incessantly and usually in an abusive manner, without the corresponding respect for their deeper democratic essence, are brought to today’s current affairs in a very practical but also profound way by the extremely nationally valuable work of the architect Professor Efthymios Warlamis and gives us the opportunity to see, for the first time in such a tangible and direct way, our real position as a nation in the shaping of the European reality, but also our essential and necessary contribution to the realization of the “Common European Home”.