Stadiou Street

Traffic will be disrupted in downtown Athens on Tuesday and Wednesday to make way for celebrations marking the March 25, 1821 anniversary of Greek independence from Turkish rule.

Students all over the country will be holding their parades on Tuesday, followed by a parade of the armed forces on Wednesday at Syntagma Square.

The government crash test took place last night at Exarheia in Athens, known as a cesspool of anarchy, when riots broke out in protest against the government's agreement with the Eurogroup following the presentation of Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis' reforms list.

By Dimitra Manifava

Fewer commercial stores shut down in the center of Athens and other popular shopping districts around the city in 2014 than in 2013, but about three in every 10 remain without a tenant, while this rate is even higher in certain central streets.

The number of shops that have been forced to close down in the Athens city center has dropped.

In September shuttered shops in the downtown area represented 27 percent of total retail spaces, or 1,657, down from 31.1 percent in March 2014 and 32.5 percent in September 2013, figures by the National Confederation of Commerce and Enterprises (ESEE) showed on Monday.

By Dimitra Manifava

For the first time since September 2012 the number of shops going out of business in Athens’s main commercial district showed a decline in March this year, according to revised data presented by the National Confederation of Greek Commerce (ESEE).

Hundreds of union members were on Thursday protesting against the government's austerity measures and high unemployment.

Demonstrators, mainly construction workers, shut down Stadiou Street in central Athens as they marched to the Ministry of Labor.

Thursday's rally is a follow up to the March 6 protest, organizers said.

By Dimitris Rigopoulos

When Andreas Varelas, deputy mayor for sanitation at the City of Athens, posted a digital mock-up on his Facebook page of a mural by artist Manolis Anastasakos to be painted on the walls around an empty plot of land in the Hafteia district of Athens, near Omonia Square, he had no idea much interest it would generate.