On the 150th anniversary of the establishment of the historic symbol of Athenian life – the Hotel Grande Bretagne – the revised 2nd edition of the unique album which tells the entire business history of the hotel with accuracy and completeness of its data has been published.
This album of Kerkyra Publications-Economia Publishing is a useful tool for the researcher of modern Greek history. The author, Angelos F. Vlachos, traces step by step the evolution of the hotel, from its foundation to the present day. At the same time, however, the history of the hotel is examined, as well as the history of Athens and the cultural history of Greece, with which it runs in parallel.
From the author’s Introduction:
A book about a thriving business is like a sailboat: you can write about it and its itinerary, and yet never know how far it might travel. More than twenty years separate this book from its first sentence. Since then, international travel has exploded, the country has changed, the Grande Bretagne has become even grander and has set sail towards new destinations as it continues to keep its leading position within Athenian tourism.
[…] In the time since the first edition of this book, much has happened – an eminent Greek thinker once referred to the ‘cunning of history’: Greek tourism in absolute terms has more than tripled and Greece seems to have acknowledged tourism’s importance as a fundamental pillar of wealth. Furthermore, this upsurge cannot but spark an interest to analyse and explain it. It is precisely in this light that the Greek hotel flagship in the heart of the capital has emerged even stronger.
The celebration of 150 years of operation is both the culmination of a unique path by a legend and a confirmation of its future.