I was in Athens so I decided to visit the oldest street in Europe, ΤΡΙΠΟΔΩΝ, and boy was I disappointed!

The street is called “Tripodon”, or “Τριπόδων” in Greek. The uppercase letters on the sign, “ΤΡΙΠΟΔΩΝ” look very different, but that’s just because I don’t understand Greek.

The tripods along it were apparently trophies for performances at the theatre. I read on one site that the tripods were bronze and on another that they were copper. I went with bronze in the script because it sounds nicer, and bronze is made of copper anyway.

This street was a big deal apparently, and lots of famous people would walk along it to the theatre, which is why we know about it from ancient times. Here’s some more reading for you:

https://greekreporter.com/2024/03/11/oldest-street-athens-europe/

Tripodon Street: the Oldest Street in Athens and Europe


46 Comments

  1. For the record the unshittification of Athens' streets is quite recent and only started in earnest in the early 2000s when the blue metro line 3 started rapidly expanding. Athens used to be way worse during the 90s when it was a certified shithole with no public transportation aside from the slow and infrequent green line and some ugly yellow buses getting constantly stuck in traffic and huge ugly highways surrounding the Acropolis among other things.

  2. Streets from the classical era tend to ennarrow in medieval times as standards lax and people encroach the streets for the frontage.

    The street grid of Heiankyo (Kyoto) were masterplanned to be wide boulevards but now they barely average 3m wide like the rest of Japan.

  3. Just from this video it's incredible just how nice car free streets are. It's so hard to describe, but the minute you see a car on the street it goes from lovely to dangerous/ugly.

  4. Idk if its the way the Sun shines in the sky, or the presence of cars littering an otherwise lovely street, but this looks sm like Viejo San Juan, Puerto Rico

  5. I don't think it's pronounced "tra-pode-on", my guess remembering how Greek immigrants spoke in Boston, would be "tree-pod-on" with the last syllable pronounced the way the French would pronounce it.

  6. Very dubious claim being that cities like Arles were Phoenician, then Greek Colonies before Roman. I would Postulate that the street at the Amphitheatre is a full Millenia Older.

  7. Plaka district in general is pretty nice. Plus for Athens in general, the metro has saved a lot of people, a lot of time. Like, distances that due to traffic took hours to cross, are now made at max within 40 minutes. And now, you can get from the Airport to Piraeus within less than an hour.

  8. welcome to Athens!!! huge fan of yours here.
    Athens is probably the worst European capital in terms of anything you are advocating in your videos, but it’s definitely a vibrant and entertaining city in many ways. Hope you enjoy it!!

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