National Garden, Athens

The Royal Garden was the scene of an unusual turning point in Greek history. In 1920, at the end of World War I, Greece under King Alexander and the government of Eleftherios Venizelos remained committed to the Megali Idea (Greek for The Great Idea) that Greece should gain control of portions of Asia Minor. In 1919, they began the Greco-Turkish War with the support of their former allies Britain and France. While walking in the Garden on September 30, 1920, King Alexander was bitten by a pet monkey (whose pet it is not revealed) and he died of sepsis three weeks later. His death ushered the return of his deposed father, King Constantine I who had been deposed for his pro-German sympathies during the First World War. Upon his return to power, King Constantine assisted in the defeat of his political nemesis, Venizelos in the November 1920 General Election. The new Prime Minister, Dimitrios Gounaris, a monarchist, began replacing the Venezelist military staff with officers more loyal to the new King. As a result of this change in political environment and it is argued, the reduction in military experience by the Army's General Staff, the Allied Powers withdrew their support. The result was the 1922 Great Fire of Smyrna, the defeat of Greek troops in Turkey with exodus of Greek refugees and the 1923 Exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey known collectively by the Greeks as the Asia Minor "Catastrophe. Winston Churchill wrote, "it is perhaps no exaggeration to remark that a quarter of a million persons died of this monkey's bite."[4]

A child and woman looking at a sundial installed at the National Gardens of Athens in 2013

In the 1920s the park was opened to the public and renamed "National Garden". In honour of Amalia of Greece, the entrance was moved to the 12 palms she planted and the street in front was renamed Queen Amalia Avenue. Since then the National Garden, is open to the public from sunrise to sunset.

Henry Miller wrote in 1939:

It remains in my memory like no other park I have known. It is the quintessence of a park, the thing one feels sometimes in looking at a canvas or dreaming of a place one would like to be in and never finds.[5]

In 2004 the Greek state gave the garden for 90 years to the city of Athens.

Ancient ruins

Inside the garden can be spotted ancient ruins, the vast majority of them are Roman. A Roman villa with a mosaic, large numbers of columns of all orders and sizes, structures connected with the Roman baths next to Zappeion and a large marble inscription about Ceaser Aelius ordered by Laius Aettius who was a Roman Legion staff officer from Epirus region and fought in battles against the Germanic tribes can be spotted. [6]