Plato’s Academy and its neighborhood are at risk! Please sign this petition, contribute to save them!

What is Plato’s Academy?

The Archaeological site
Plato’s Academy is a place of great symbolic significance worldwide: in 387 BC, one of the oldest universities in the world and a cradle of Western civilization was founded here.
In this area North-West of the ancient City of Athens, on the banks of Kifissos river and among several places of worship, a gymnasium and a sacred olive groove dedicated to the goddess Athena, Plato established his famous philosophical school!
Rediscovered in 1929 through excavation, today Plato’s Academy is an Archaeological Park in the western boundary of the Athens city centre, forming the symbolic core of the neighborhood known by the same name.
Furthermore, Plato’s Academy is an “industrial archaeological” site with many abandoned factories and workshops, some of which are of great architectural interest.

The public park and the neighborhood
The archaeological site at Plato’s Academy forms part of a public garden and is the reference point to the whole surrounding area.
Plato’s Academy is a dynamic neighborhood of contemporary Athens where new cultural values are shaped and an area where urban commons are produced and cultivated in these years of crisis and many efforts related to social, political and economic positive innovation have been created and developed. New ways of cultural production and cooperative, social and solidarity economy processes emerge from the daily life of the neighborhood.

The public park is a precious ‘green island’ of local and city-wide importance for Athens, where the percentage of green areas is very low (7%, vs. the 24% European cities average). As such, it is an essential point of reference for the local residents: A space that allows the development of relationships among the local community, where many leisure, sports, and cultural activities take place.
Together all these characteristics make up a polymorphic urban fabric and a unique place where the ancient past is intermeshed with the more recent one and with the vibrant present, a palimpsest of its archaeological, cultural, natural, industrial and social landscapes.

A shopping mall of any kind, let alone of the size and disrespectful disposition of a project naming itself Academy Gardens, is utterly incompatible in this context and has to be revoked! Conversely, we believe that the neighborhood possesses the qualities needed for all of us to seek a better quality of life, better, healthier and more vibrant community lives we are in need of.

Help us preserve historical cultural heritage!
Help us preserve urban commons, green open space and the neighborhood!
Sign this petition, save Plato’s Academy!