Aristides Baltas

Aristides Baltas, a former minister of culture, has announced his departure from the main opposition SYRIZA party. 

Baltas announced his decision in an op-ed published in Efimerida ton Syntakton on Wednesday in which he also accused new SYRIZA leader Stefanos Kasselakis of transforming the party into "a personal instrument of his unchecked ambition." 

The former director of Greece's biggest annual cultural event was cleared on Tuesday of financial mismanagement charges by an appeals court in Athens.

Giorgos Loukos, who served as head of the Athens & Epidaurus Festival from 2006 until he was ousted in 2015, had been accused of over-charging the Greek state some 2.7 million euros between 2013 and 2014.

In a self-critical mood, three senior members of leftist SYRIZA have authored a review of the party's four-and-a-half years in power which will be presented for approval to its Central Committee this weekend. 

French philhellene Olivier Descotes, former head of the French Institute in Athens, was named on Tuesday as special adviser to Culture Minister Aristides Baltas after resigning from the helm of the Benaki Museum, a post he had assumed earlier this year.

After ten years, a bill endorsing the concession of a large plot of the former Athens airport at Elliniko to a real estate consortium has been approved by the Greek Parliement on Wednesday. The area in question is the 70-kilometer coastal stretch from Faliro near Piraeus all the way to Sounio, which is expected to be developed within the next decade into a destination in its own right.

Parliament on Wednesday approved a bill endorsing the concession of a large plot of the former Athens airport at Elliniko to a real estate consortium but the debate preceding the vote exposed divisions within the leftist-led coalition over the privatization project.

OTE Group, in cooperation with the Greek Ministry of Culture and Sports, will offer free wireless broadband (Wi-Fi) services at 20 top archaeological sites and museums in Greece. The goal of this investment exceeding €2 million is to promote the Greek cultural heritage through technology and promote the public’s interaction and connection with the sites.

In a ceremony at the amphitheatre of the Cultural Ministry, in Athens the official UNESCO World Intangible Heritage with the inclusion of Tinian marble crafting was presented to Greece. Citizens from the island of Tinos and marble craftsmen reps from the island were present, as was the Minister of Culture, Aristides Baltas. The President of the UNESCO Greek national committee, A.

Greek Minister of Culture Aristides Baltas released a press statement, Monday, attempting to quell an uproar regarding the possibility that his decision to designate a 10,000 acre area as a protected archaeological site in the region of  Afantou in Rhodes would jeopardise a large tourist investment on the island.

Minister of Culture Aristides Baltas expressed a different perceptive of what is happening in Idomeni.

Speaking on Thursday at a press conference, Mr. Baltas referred to refugee issue and argued that Greece should not be ashamed of what is going on in Idomeni.