A town which does not yet have a road, but where they started building a palace

The city had been ravaged by the war and struck one visitor as a 'disgusting and filthy place'. Two years after Otto's palace had started, a French reporter scoffed: '[New Athens] is a town which does not yet have a road, but where they started building a palace - a sufficiently correct image of a country where they first made a king before they were assured that there was a nation.'

M. Mazower, The Greek Revolution (2021), 443

Constantinople is the great capital, the city, the attraction and the hope of all the Hellenes

In 1844, the Prime Minister Collettis in a speech to the constituent assembly revealed the place of Constantinople in Greek hearts and minds: 'There are two great centres of Hellenism, Athens and Constantinople. Athens is only the capital of the kingdom; Constantinople is the great capital, the city, the attraction and the hope of all the Hellenes.' Pictures of the Oecuminical Patriarch hung on   Greek walls beside the king and Queen of the Hellenes - and Aya Sofya, without minarets.


P. Mansel, Constantinople: city of the world's desire (1995), 280