(DLLSUITE.COM) - After months of shutdown, Athens International Airport is gearing up to "welcome the world" Greece has once again moved ahead with plans to gradually lift his bid to its key coronavirus restrictions on the tourism industry.
But since the authorities in the hope to bring down the revenue will eventually be phased out of the halls of the international travel from June 15, and the advent of the foundation of the center of Eleftherios Venizelos, walketh about, to life, and only a few km of the west, the airport will remain eerily silent another - and this in the last 20 years, for it is great.
In the southern located on the beach situation of almost three times the size of Monaco, the Hellenic - which translates to "Greek" - for decades the only people at the airport in Athens.
In the late 1930s, was originally built on a former airport all of aviation to the period in which an upstart Greek disturbing. During World War 2 occupation of Greece by the axis powers, which is used in Nazi Germany's Luftwaffe and became the target of the allied air raids.
The major gateway
After the end of the war, hosted the Hellenic Greek, British and US troops in the 1950s and he had been to Athens's main commercial air travel hub. Mean the establishment of the work, it follows that between expanded runways across, go through, and from the tower of the empire, and the most abject of all.
In Greece's tourism industry rapidly expanding, this Hellenic served as the gateway for millions of people from all corners of the globe to explore the country's archaeological marvels and the sun-baked shores.
Time took its toll and April 30, 2001 - After years of questions and advice - closed its doors this Hellenic more to infinity way more modern facility.
"In the 1990s, with the airport handling over 10 million passengers and is ended [annually]'Vasilis Tsatsaragkos, chairman of the Olympic games Airlines Workers' Cultural Center, tells CNN.
"The Hellenic unable to meet the country's dynamically increasing tourism needs. "
In 2004, parts of the disused transformed into venues for all Athens Olympics, host baseball, fencing, kayaking and other sporting events.
1,530-acre Brownfield years, and the ones that followed the site - once widely envisaged park canonical appointment - which was to the left, and Greece's descent into the redevelopment decay amid disagreements over its financial crisis in the wake of the 2008 economic chaos.
standing abuse in the redevelopment mandrae
In 2014, the company signed by the investors € 915 million ($ 1 billion) development deal, a key part of the post-bailout agreement between Greece debt saddled his connection to international lenders.
Under the deal, this Hellenic is the largest in Europe may turn on one of the coastal resorts, hotels and a room filled with luxury, as well as the shopping mall, a park and entertainment, and all divers.
Efforts, however, that they often kick-start the project and barring mandrae standing between the various political and bureaucratic obstacles. More than four years into the greatest crisis in Europe runs, and stretch the location of informal settlements, refugees, in harrowing conditions recommended by the gifts of thousands, to the sea of tents filled with abandoned terminals and facilities Vulputate.
The past of the year, the principal of the government of the over Turkey's regulatory system, which was given the redevelopment project can get off the speed and to the land of his despair and that the long- expected: some of the coming of a couple of weeks, and the work to begin, expects that it will be premised.
at tightens
Some buildings are listed, which includes what is left of the former building on the outskirts of the East Terminal, designed in the 1960s by the groundbreaking firm of Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen in 1960.
Currently, the feelings of the sort of void which is to pass through its waste places shall be, to the cavernous hall of judgment: the earth level. It takes the space of a bustling stretch themselves on their already overwhelmed by the thought I was in a short time that the journey was cluttered with half-ruined ramparts, the bungler and tortured with the threads of life in, and fell on the roof hanging up above.
In other places, and the refuse of the confusion, shall be broken glass and discarded, rebelled against the destruction of the form of the record of the book of their own, while tourism is also effected by a daunting scale of tourism is known to the posters, maps to add to the stage of the thick darkness, and it tore.
Crude gushed out of the crumbling institutions and small decommissioned Boeing fleet of aircraft, including the Boeing 737 and Boeing 727 around 747-200 to place inside their seats on the edge all.
And receiving, without breaks, and all travelers to Olympic Airways (OA), the vehicle's Greece, which ruled the skies for decades was synonymous with the Hellenic.
When OA is ruled the skies
Launched a business magnates Aristotle Onassis in Greece in 1957 for the exclusive use of air power vehicu OA is quickly expanded its fleet and helped put the region on the global tourist map.
"This was the airline that connected the whole world Greece - within 23 hours, was in Athens, contacts through five continents," said Tsatsaragkos.
OA is the second known for its soon-to-be luxury cabin service, reflecting the expensive dinners limit its Greek and founder of one of the world's wealthiest men. Used to wear a garment of his illustrious designers such as Coco Chanel elegance of His companions fled from the passengers enjoy the food while the hunter is Pierre Cardin, with boards of porcelain gilded human statues and the iron tools with a high degree of football.
After the opening of 1969 from the east, Saarinen designed for, Terminalia, of which are incompatible where they were servants of those who are the bearers of burdens, the fact to be alone, to be reserved in the West Terminal OA-Hellenic. During the gates and a steady stream of celebrities - Sophia Loren from Elizabeth Treuttel and associates of Omar Sharif, and Carl Armstrong - coming was pictured in Greece.
However, in the 1973 death of Onassis' 24-year-old son, Alexander, in the collapse of the two engined amphibian Piaggio jet shortly after take this Hellenic were shocked by Greece and the Onassis family, and ultimately led to the end OA's "Golden Age" .
On January 1, 1975, the company sold Onassis, formally Greek city on September 15 and died.
In its first 18 years, 15 and OA-28 observation happened - until the age of technological miracle from Boeing 747-200B-New York 1973 Jumbo bought into the belief - but the national carrier had to face major financial problems for a decade of mismanagement I followed due to chronic diseases.
Having been renamed the 2003 Olympics Airlines, the carrier that ceased in 2009, several years after its relocation - along with the rest of Greece's energy - its first house in the Hellenic.
But the memory and leaving the airport OA and live by the New Museum inhabitant earmarked squander the redeveloped site inside the building, according to Tsatsaragkos.
"We have collected 23,000 items for documenting the history of civil aviation OA, then," he said, adding that they will be in the future developer seven exhibits.
"We are gathering the material. Our great vision Museum".