Dear David
You may have seen the article in Sunday's Telegraph that a new Colossus will be built in Rhodes. There's many a slip twixt cup and lip of course - but as the wife of the sculptor Nikos Kotziamanis, I can keep colleagues informed of progress. Just to say that Nikos has been in intermittent negotiations with the mayor of Rhodes for about 15 years - but he never quite got round to it. So it was the mayor of Kallithea, about 7 kms from Rhodes town, who took up the idea. Of course the media have hooked it in with the notorious reputation of Faliraki, which forms part of the municipality, - but the propsed but the proposed site is on a hill overlooking 'the Anthony Quinn beach'
where 'Guns of Navarone' was filmed. The next move is for architects, surveyors, and
engineers to visit the spot to start planning. The maquette featured in the Telegraph is Nikos' work, but it's unlikely to have the arm outstretched for seismic reasons - but they're working on it!Veronica (Kotziamani) (By the way my surname doesn't have the final 's'; I'm in the genitive!)
Here's the Sunday Telegraph article:
New Colossus of Rhodes will keep watch on drunken Britons
By Harry de Quetteville in Athens
(Filed: 27/02/2005)
More than two millennia after it was toppled by an earthquake, the Colossus of Rhodes - one of the seven wonders of the ancient world - is to rise again. Instead of standing astride the venerable port of Rhodes town, however, the 100ft bronze figure will tower over the island's downmarket resort of Faliraki, infamous for the drunken antics of thousands of British tourists who go there every year.
Faliraki, about five miles south of Rhodes town, boasts a strip of bars and clubs a third of a mile long, where cut-price alcohol lures hordes of tourists on drinking binges and pub crawls. Girls lie propped unconscious outside bars, while inside, others dance on table tops and compete in wet T-shirt contests, furthering Faliraki's reputation for promiscuity and casual sex.
Undeterred, a British-based Greek artist, Nikos Kotziamanis, has assembled a 10-strong Colossus team, including landscapers and structural engineers, who will ensure that it can stand up to the earthquakes which affect the region of Rhodes today.
"Rhodes occasionally suffers earthquakes of up to 6.5 on the Richter scale," Mr Kotziamanis said. "But we have a seismologist and are designing the new Colossus to be able to withstand much stronger shocks. The idea is that the new statue doesn't suffer the same fate as the old one."
Few details are known of the original Colossus of Rhodes, which was built by a local sculptor between 304 and 292BC and whose face was reputedly modelled on that of Alexander the Great. It was destroyed little more than half a century later.
Pliny the Elder recorded that before they were sold off, the surviving fragments attracted the awe of onlookers. "Few men can clasp the thumb in their arms,'' he wrote, "and its fingers are larger than most statues."
Faliraki's mayor, Iannis Iatridis, said: "The Colossus was one of the wonders of the ancient world. The new statue will be the miracle of the 21st century."
Greek designers have long dreamed of rebuilding the Colossus. Permission has never been granted, however, to restore the statue to its original location, even with the support of politicians including the former prime minister, Andreas Papandreou.
According to superstition dating back thousands of years, the Delphic oracle warned islanders not to rebuild the Colossus after it was destroyed. That has not, however, scared off Mr Iatridis, who has claimed the project as his own, describing it as "the finishing touch to complete beautiful Faliraki".
"Faliraki is a very beautiful place and it's irrelevant that British people see it as a place to get drunk," he said. "What we're doing is for future generations."
Mr Kotziamanis said: "I'm sure it won't come to be seen as an icon for British drunkenness. I think they will see this in a different way. This will not be a theme-park caricature but a genuine achievement for the 21st century."
Scholars and devotees of the classical world are likely to be less enthusiastic, given Faliraki's seedier claim to contemporary fame.
Nelina Filimonos, director of the Archaeological Museum in Rhodes, said that she supported neither the statue, nor its proposed site.
"We are against this project. We know very little about the original statue and so we don't think we have enough information to build a new Colossus," she said.
"There are more important things to be done, and putting it in Faliraki is a gross distortion of history." Mr Kotziamanis plans to cast each section of the monument in his foundry, in London Docklands, before shipping them to Rhodes.
"It will be like the Statue of Liberty, which was crafted and assembled in France before being taken apart and shipped to New York," he said.
His designs resemble a male counterpart to the New York landmark, itself supposedly an echo of the Colossus, and the completed statue will bear a crown and carry a torch. Work is due to begin next month, when Mr Kotziamanis will lead a survey team to Faliraki. Once construction is under way, the £35 million project will take a further four years to complete.
Mr Iatridis said that funding would come from companies eager to be associated with the landmark. Because of Greek bureaucracy, however, obtaining building permits could take at least a year, he said.
