Seven days in Athens

Athens and Attica - a part of his famous book Itinéraire

de Paris à Jérusalem et de Jérusalem à Paris published

in 1811 in Paris.

Chateaubriand, maybe one of the most important

persons in the Neoclassical Revival of Europe and

Romanticism, decided to travel from Paris to Jerusalem,

in a period that Napoleonic Wars were happening in

Europe.

Having in his suitcases a reference letter from

Talleyrand, he arrived in Ottoman Greece in August 10 th

1806, and in Athens the morning of 23 rd . He first goes to

the French consul, the famous Fauvel. Together they

discover all antiquities of the city, most of them that are in

Athens today.

Chateaubriand is inspired by his journey and the

Muslim atmosphere of Athens, contrary to the ideal image

he carried in his mind from Solon’s Athens of 6 th century

BC. He is awed by the ruins and memories of the past that

this city carries. Of course, Athens is only a stop in his

journey to the Middle East, so he has to hurry to take the

boat that will take him to the coasts of Anatolia with other

pilgrims. He makes a short stop at Cape Sounio in August

29 th , where records his thoughts on ancient Greek, Roman

and modern Greek history, giving us the context that

Greeks suffered under Ottoman rule. He believed that

modern Greeks could never gain their freedom. History

proved him wrong, and Chateaubriand lived enough to see

it, since he died in 1848.aa