Around 50 years ago, Thessaloniki decided to do something about the endless traffic jams in the city. The idea was a metro, connecting the rectangular-shaped city center underground. Today, however, not one station opened. Why? Because building amongst archeological sites is nearly impossible.

The tunnel for Thessaloniki’s metro resulted in the largest archeological dig in northern Greece. While construction of the metro quickly came to a stop, 300 archeologists had 20 square kilometers of Byzantine structures to be unearthed. With over 10 years of delay, the metro is still not functional today, but archeologists found a real treasure.

Although I fully agree that the archeological findings in Greece are valuable and do need to be preserved. I want to show you a different side of this story. Because while living in a country with ancient stones in every back garden might sound romantic to you. It is actually not as great as it seems. Building amongst archeological sites actually causes big problems all throughout Greece.

As soon as construction starts, it stops

Whenever someone wants to build something, somewhere in Greece, there is one main rule he or she has to follow. Stop when there is a sign of any kind of old object in the ground.

But imagine that you bought a piece of land in your favorite region in Greece. The plans for your dream house are ready, construction starts with digging for the foundation, and then… it stops. Either you will have months or even years of delay. Or archeologists will tell you after this time that you can forget all about your dream house. You instead bought yourself an archeological site. Yay..?

The same thing can happen even when you inherit the family house. Maybe the foundation needs to be strengthened or maybe you want to make an extension to fit the whole family. Well even if the house and garden have been in family for years, chances are big that you as well, will stumble upon some artifact that either leaves you with an unhabitable house or a big delay.

It is too expensive to build

During countless construction projects in Greece, both big and small, something valuable is found. Resulting in delays, higher costs, or loss of invested money. The Thessaloniki metro, for example, went from a budget of 1.1 billion euros to costing over 3.5 billion. With an additional 132 million euros spent on archeology, of which the budget was just 15 million. But where this project was able to continue because of funding, many Greeks are not able to pay 3x more as planned for a simple house.

Do they stop at every stone?

As a result, many building sites are left abandoned and unfinished. And although ancient ruins are not the main reason for the abandoned structures, it is one that seems so surreal to me.

I can imagine the frustration of developers when again an ancient wall is found by a bulldozer. I wonder if they would really stop at every single stone or just throw away a few to speed up the process. It is not easy, building amongst archeological sites when they are litteraly everywhere.

It reminds me of the projects I worked on in Germany, where it is very common to have either a bomb or a bunker underneath your plot. A different kind of history but one that prevents architectural growth as much as the ancient ruins in Greece do. Funny.