This book attempts to speak of the entire Piraeus. About the port city that began to be built in the early 19th century upon desolate ancient ruins, matured, reached its peak, and declined towards the end of the 20th century. The coming years will show whether it continues to decline or if it is entering a phase of recovery.

The modern Piraeus would not exist without the large natural harbor in this location of the Greek peninsula and the eastern Mediterranean, and without the capital of the new post-revolutionary state being designated in Athens.

The first core of those who governed and planned the city, although they turned to commerce from the very beginning, realized early on, after the mid-19th century, that a cosmic change was occurring in Europe—the industrialization—and they pushed the city in that direction.

What no one ever predicted was the scale of population growth. Everything that happened during the interwar period, the sequence of wars and the expulsion of populations resulting in a continuous flow of refugees, was a leap, not always forward.

In its two centuries of history, the city expanded along the coast from Faliro to Perama, and to the outskirts of Aigaleo, with half a million residents and a distinct identity. Its life and evolution are and will always be intertwined with its port.

From the wealthy neighborhoods of the 19th-century bourgeoisie to the areas plagued by poverty and industrial pollution inhabited by all kinds of war refugees and economic migrants, from its founding to today, Piraeus is organized as a single city, despite the shocking class contrasts that divide its society.