Abstract
Greece is a country with a long and glorious past that is reflected in its rich monumental heritage spread throughout the country and well beyond its territorial seas. However, despite the long list of archaeological sites, new archaeological findings are constantly revealed, usually by accident, when constructions with a need to dig take place (for public works, private buildings etc.). When that occurs, all works stop, for official procedures to take place (inspections, surveys, excavations etc), causing extreme delays but also disappointment to the interested parties. After the 1990s though, a new approach was put to test. Instead of spending years excavating to remove all archaeological items from the site - which until then had been considered the only acceptable practice for their protection and conservation - the Hellenic Ministry of Culture experimented with another option: the in situ conservation and display of antiquities as part of the new use of the space. In the begging, this alternative approach was tested in just a few private constructions but later it was also implemented in an emblematic public (underground) transportation infrastructure: the Athens metro line, that opened to the public just two years before the Olympic Games in 2004. However, in the case of Thessaloniki, where the works for the metro line are still in progress, the Greek state is rather indecisive, reaching contradicting and subversive decisions. This, despite the fact that so far, all the in situ attempts were fully embraced by experts and non-experts (citizens, entrepreneurs, scholars, etc, even by visitors), for contributing to the upgrade of the quality of life and to the production of urban public spaces where place identities and communities are highly connected to their past. The paper presents key information on the shift in Greece towards the in situ approach when hidden archaeological layers are found, in spaces where new uses need to take place. The paper also provides critical observations for Thessaloniki metro line, in which the adopted preservation approach is different than in the case of Athens, raising controversy among interested parties.
