Origin of the name
In ancient Greek, the name of Athens was , related t? and its dialectal variant the Attic and Ionic names respectively of the goddess Athena, the goddess of disciplined war and wisdom.

Statue of Athena, the patron goddess of Athens

The city's name was in the plural, like those of T?ßa? ( Thêbai ) and ?????a? ( Mukênai ). Ath?nai was originally a group of ten cities or ten "tribes" ( phylai ) which according to the legend Theseus unified into one city; Following the reforms of Cleisthenes the city was again divided into ten tribes or electorates . In the 19th century, ????a? was formally re-adopted as the city's name. Since the official abandonment of Katharevousa Greek in the 1970s, ????a ( Athína ) has become the city's official name.

History

The history of Athens is one of the longest of any city in, Europe or the world; it has been continuously inhabited for at least 3,000 years. Athens became the leading city of ancient Greece in the first millennium BC, with its cultural achievements during the 5th century BC laying the foundations of Western civilization. During the Middle Ages, the city experienced decline and then recovery under the Byzantine Empire, and was relatively prosperous during the Crusades, benefiting from Italian trade; after a long period of decline under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, Athens re-emerged in the 19th century as the capital of the independent Greek state, and in 1896 hosted the first modern Olympic Games. In the 1920s a number of refugees, expelled from Asia Minor after the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922), swelled Athens ' population; nevertheless it was most particularly following the Second World War, and from the 1950s and 1960s, that the population of the city exploded, and Athens experienced a gradual expansion in all directions.

In the 1980s it became evident that smog from factories and an ever increasing fleet of automobiles, as well as a lack of adequate free space due to overcongestion, had evolved into the city's most important challenges. A series of anti-pollution measures taken by the city's authorities in the 1990s, combined with a substantial improvement of the city's infrastructure (including the Attiki Odos ring road, the dramatic expansion of the Athens Metro, and the brand new Athens International Airport ), alleviated pollution considerably and transformed Athens into a much more functional city.