Little more than a provincial town when Greece achieved independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1830, Athens was essentially rebuilt by Bavarian planners during the rule of Otto of Wittelsbach, the country’s first modern king.

But just a small fraction of the buildings remain from that period when Athens was a young emerging capital with a mere 150,000 inhabitants.

They number around 10,600, according to Monumenta, an association that has compiled a database aimed at “raising awareness for the survival of the modern architectural heritage among authorities as well as owners.”

“Most of these are abandoned, ruined, demolished. More than 80 per cent of such buildings no longer exist,” laments Irini Gratsia, an archaeologist and co-founder of Monumenta.

Many were torn down in the 1960s and 1970s, a period of chaotic expansion in the Greek capital, and replaced by concrete blocks of flats.

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One of Athens’ most emblematic modern buildings, the US embassy, was likewise conceived in the 1950s by German architect Walter Gropius, one of the founders of the Bauhaus school.

Athens’ modernist architecture has a key role to play alongside its more famous ancient ruins, notes Gratsia.

She singles out Greek architecture emulating the work of Le Corbusier, the Swiss-French pioneer of the modern movement, whose concrete-dominated style can be seen today in many public buildings such as schools.

“These buildings were masterpieces of that era and those that remain should be preserved,” says Gratsia.