Admittedly it's all very impressive. But at the same time there is a sense that they're trying just a little bit too hard; one feels rather too heavily the weight of a national chip on a national shoulder. Even the statues of the Mothers Of Macedonia, breastfeeding their infants, seem to have been sculpted to appear more intimidatingly buxom than the Mothers Of Lesser Countries.
And, frankly, it's all ever so slightly fake. Most of what you see in the pictures below has been built only in the past decade or two, and at considerable expense. Sometimes you feel like you're in ancient Greece or Rome, but more often you feel like you're in Las Vegas.
There are three things to be said in favour of all this. Firstly, the city was levelled in a 1963 earthquake and they had to put up something to replace it; secondly, it's been a successful tourist draw and thus an important earner of foreign currency (mainly from Germans and Italians); thirdly, Neoclassicism can be a bit kitsch but it's still preferable to the living death of glass'n'steel in which most capital cities are wreathed nowadays. I must also concede that it's a bit rich for a Briton to deride another country's attempts at celebrating their imperial past...
Well, anyway, good luck to them. It all makes for decent photos.
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| Archaelogical Museum |
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| Museum Of The Macedonian Struggle (yes it's really called that) The slightly creepy appearance of the river is due to the long exposure of the photo. |
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| Another angle of the Archeological Museum |
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| Ridiculously big statue of Alexander the Great (here they call him 'Alexander of Macedon', just in case anybody forgets) |
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| They may have 30 copies of 'Mein Kampf' on display, but they also have 9 books by Nelson Mandela. So that's alright then. |
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| Edd vs Food #69 Chicken and grilled cheese at Kaj Serdarot Not all that great. Off-season tourist food. |
