RIZARI PARK
Near the Athens war museum and the Evangelismo Metro Station, a green oasis of exclusively Mediterranean flora is situated between two busy avenues. The plants were bequeathed in 1844 by Giorgios Rizaris, a former member of the Society of Friends, perhaps the most important of the secret associations formed in the struggle for Greece’s independence from the Ottoman Empire. Rizaris’s wish was for a garden in the city centre for the recreation of its youth. David Harding has paved a ‘desire line’ cutting across the park embedding a couplet on love from Samuel Beckett’s 1936 poem Cascando: ‘If you do not love me I shall not be loved. If I do not love you I shall not love.’ Harding’s recent research on Beckett has found a report that noted: ‘New Irish Offshore Patrol Vessels named the Samuel Beckett Class.’ In the past year, the PV Samuel Beckett has been patrolling the sea off the coast of Libya rescuing refugees.