For all too many people, ATHENS is a city that happened two-and-a-half thousand years ago. It"s true that even now a glorious past looms large– literally, in the shape of the mighty Acropolis that dominates almost every view, as well as every visitor"s itinerary. Yet the modern conurbation is home to over four million people– more than a third of the Greek nation"s population– and has undergone a transformation in the twenty-first century, partly thanks to the stimulus of the 2004 Olympics, that has made it far more than a repository of antiquities and lifted it beyond the cliche"s of pollution and impossible traffic that blighted its reputation in recent years.