It’s always hard to try to summarize and compress feelings, intentions, motives, and dreams. This website is a sum of all four. It is the sum of all four if you add to them countless hours of hard work. Was it worth it? You bet it was.
This website is the outcome of one man’s labor. The man is an amateur historian, or better an amateur lover of history. The man is also a fervent supporter of the European Union of States. His main motive was to learn more about the history of the cities he loved and had never been taught in school and university years. Knowledge then. Was it just that? Well no. In the beginning, there’s always the need for money and resources that can turn a dream into reality. That was more a fantasy of a man in need. When the content started to take shape, it was obvious that this website would be heavily indebted to the main sources, hundreds of texts, and countless picture files of this wonder of the internet era called Wikipedia. This website would never exist if it wasn’t for Wikipedia commons.
So as to be clear, the editor and administrator of this website hereby clarifies that no media file, no picture, none whatsoever is the property of the website. About 90% of them belong to the category of the Wikipedia commons. Everyone is free to copy, download and distribute according to the policy of each Wikipedia common file. The rest of the files are also part of a free sharing community, the Pixabay.
The intention was to make reading fun. To make history friendlier to younger generations, sexier than a volume of an old fashioned encyclopedia. The files were there for everyone to see but nowhere to be seen if one didn’t look hard enough. Well that was all the hard work the editor did. Look hard enough. Search, collect and redistribute. Did the outcome vindicate my initial intention..the reader will be the judge of that.
Knowledge is power and history is its treasure trove. It would be a pity for one to live in the age of knowledge and not make the best of it.
Letter from the Editor.
Spiro Petraki