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Why was Athens almost empty when it became the Greek capital?
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Athens
The Acropolis and surrounding area, Athens.
When Athens was designated as the capital of Greece, it was nearly empty because the city had been entirely evacuated in 1827 during the Greek fight for independence.1
By 1833, when Otto was installed as the king of the Hellenes, the area held only about 4,000 people living in a small collection of houses on the northern slope of the Acropolis. Following its establishment as the capital, the city began to grow at a steady rate of approximately 7 percent annually.1