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Rallis by the Liston
Wasn’t expecting to find this here. Next to the Liston, not too forward, not too loud, a bust of George Rallis, prime minister in the late 1970s, and local boy (albeit born in Athens). His prime ministership was not that consequential. A few Greeks, I gathered, appreciated having one prime ministerial term without histrionics from the top, wedged as his term was between Constantine Karamanlis and Andreas Papandreou.
I see the bust was stolen in 2019. That is a hazard of any sculpture in our age, even for as John Major-like a figure as George Rallis. One presumes they have the cast handy to make up for it.
He did have the dubious distinction of being Greek nepotism at its most metastasised: son of a PM and grandson of two other PMs: Nick Nicholas’ Answer To: From Venizelos to Papandreou, Mitsotakis and their sons, Karamanlis and now again Mitsotakis, politics in Greece seems a family business. Why?
Also the only PM I’ve ever seen, at a distance in Sitia as a kid. He was so much more human-sized than on TV, I remember.
Then again, Rallis’ legacy was that he was human-sized, unlike the outsized politicians that bookended him…
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