Neoclassical Architecture in Greece (Getty Trust Publications: J. Paul Getty Museum)

The establishment of the Modern Greek state in the late 1820s, after four centuries of Ottoman rule, marks a crucial advance in the long history of the Greek nation. Inspired by their new sense of nationalism, the Greeks turned to their own rich architectural heritage - the physical ruins of whose glories stood all around them - for inspiration in building the towns and cities of the new Greek state. The development of this Neoclassical architecture in Greece had distant roots in the Enlightenment and the climate of Western humanism - including a predilection for the ancient world that pervaded eighteenth-century European thought.