Word: syntagma
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...Greece's first election in more than a decade, Syntagma Square in Athens became a stage in a classic setting...
...there was the sandstone Parliament building, its doors still shuttered after seven years of dictatorial rule. To the south there was the stately Acropolis, a more distant symbol of the contest to be waged. During the last three nights of the campaign, the leading political par ties came to Syntagma Square to stage their final rallies and make their last pitch to the voters - as stirring a symbol of Greece's return to democracy as the election itself. TIME'S Dean Brelis attended the rallies and sent this report...
...next afternoon two minor earthquakes hit Athens-strong enough to make windows rattle, tables and chairs tremble. A fitting prelude to Andreas Papandreou's appearance in Syntagma Square? Perhaps. For the former Berkeley and Harvard economics professor, leader of the new Panhellenic Socialist Movement (Pasok), had brought an unsettling element to the campaign. Barnstorming the country in a black leather jacket, followed by hordes of young people in jeans and faded army field jackets, he brought a new style of campaigning to Greece and emerged as a political messiah of the young...
There was a strong wind blowing across Syntagma Square Friday evening. In front of the Grande Bretagne Hotel, a Rolls-Royce was parked. Across its bumper was a sticker: I'M VOTING FOR CARAMANLIS. Up above, every room in the hotel facing the square was filled with parties of wealthy Greeks waiting with champagne. The crowd, well over 200,000 this time, was older, dressed in furs and Paris fashions; the scents were not of garlic and grass but of Chanel and Givenchy. Many carried candles to light as they had done when Caraman lis returned to Greece last...
...curtain came down on Syntagma Square with the Caramanlis loud speakers playing the freedom songs of Theodorakis. The pigeons went back, and the waiters put out the tables and chairs. The drama was over - or perhaps it had just begun: Greece was again a democracy...