Sunday, July 06, 2008

Greek temple in Canberra

After many weeks away in the Eastern Mediterranean I felt I had come full circle when I noticed the stone set into the foyer of the National Library of Australia. This is a marble block from from the Library of Pantainos in the Ancient Agora of Athens and was a gift of the Greek Government in 1973. The NLA building is in a style called "Stripped Classical", looking like a Greek temple, with all the fiddly bits removed. The library currently looks even more like a Greek site, as there is a large wire fence around part of it and a temporary steel roof, while refurbishment work is done. Just about every second public building in Greece seems to be having work done on it.

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