Athens of 1961, captured on color film, from the videos released by the British Pathe through its Youtube channel. The video is included in the archive published by British Pathe and is a tourist tribute to Athens, in color film, from 1961.

We see main streets of the city, such as Amalia, Dionysiou Areopagitou and Panepistimiou, with more buses and trolleys than cars. In the heart of summer, in Plaka, we see very few tourists, in the few tourist shops. Characteristic is the image on the corner of Mnisikleous and Lysiou streets, in the old tavern of Kritiko, where two foreign visitors enjoy the grapes sold by a street greengrocer.

In Syntagma Square, a itinerant photographer with a classic, old camera, placed in a box, with photos-samples of his work adorning his shop window, captures a little boy sitting on the bench.

The images from Mikrolimano, in Piraeus, are also incredible, with very low buildings, a large fleet of fishermen stranded in the port, with their nets spread at the pier, its clean beaches and minimal commercial activity.

In Vouliagmeni, images are captured from an organized open beach with several bathers sunbathing. It is characteristic that there was not even an umbrella for sun protection, as, at that time, we were not talking about an ozone hole, nor about skin cancer and all these scary things that they did to us, in the intervening years, to see the sun more as an enemy than as a friend who will help us do a tropical tan.

Around Elliniko airport, where the plane carrying Pathe’s mission lands, there is not a single building and Hymettus is free from any human construction activity.