Aliki Chapple
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commonmugwort.bsky.social
Aliki Chapple
@commonmugwort.bsky.social
1.3K followers 1.1K following 3.9K posts
Literary translator, actor, early modern drama enthusiast.
Luddite geek. Greek. Truth, justice, and the comics. Mostly in Athens.
(@amaenad from Twitter but more chill)

All photos licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
More on: https://pixelfed.social/CommonMugwort
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commonmugwort.bsky.social
Ruins of Athens: Lemon courtyard.
#Athens #UrbanPhotography
Colour photo. Taken through a rusty garden gate that frames the image, a tiny whitewashed courtyard, derelict, with a narrow, simple colonnade, whitewash flaking, above a wooden door painted yellow. There’s a lemon tree in the courtyard, and leaves and two green lemons hang above the door in the picture. Above them, a curlicue in the rusted gate looms large and slightly out of focus.
November 25, 2025 at 6:36 AM
commonmugwort.bsky.social
Old Athens: School
#Athens #UrbanPhotography
Colour photo: The doorway of a school, shabby looking, but I think still functioning. Close-up. A grid of metalwork painted pale blue, the wires cut or missing to crate a clear rectangle, through which a shadowy hallway leads to a yellow-lit school corridor work a bulletin board and educational posters.
November 24, 2025 at 6:56 AM
commonmugwort.bsky.social
Ruins of Athens: Kountouriotika
#Athens #UrbanPhotography
#AbandonedPlaces
Colour photo: framed in the rectangular opening in a security gate, grey-pale blue and dark tarnished metal, the courtyard of a large abandoned institutional building. I think it’s a school. Plain marble steps lead up from the gate to a grassy courtyard backed by a low stone wall. Above the wall, the three-storey building looms on three sides, the ground level sheltered by a porch all around, arched windows on the floor above, a balcony running the perimeter above that, wide rectangular windows and tall narrow doors alternating - classrooms. The building is in pretty good shape, glass in the windows, the pale Athenian ochre colour of the walls largely unblemished. Round the other side, not in frame, there’s scaffolding. Maybe they plan to do something with it. In the foreground on the right, a blue plastic skip with the number 5 on it, a black and white cat, head low, setting off across the courtyard.
November 23, 2025 at 7:15 AM
commonmugwort.bsky.social
Today, let’s bow before this feline magnificence, enthroned in a work of public art.
#CatsOfAthens #Athens #UrbanPhotography #cats #Caturday
Colour photo. A cat on a folded blanket sitting inside the base of a pillar-like sculpture made of steel beams and stacked sheets of glass. The sculpture is rusty and dusty, the cat black-masked and white- bellied, with a black throat and a small black dot on the nose. The eyes are green and wary.
November 22, 2025 at 6:20 AM
commonmugwort.bsky.social
Leaf shadow on marble.
#Athens #UrbanPhotography
It doesn’t matter that this is a colour photo. The edge of a dark doorway clad in marble, and a couple of outside steps. Leaf shadow and sunlight dapple it. The pavement outside dappled too. All grey and pale sunlight, white and black.
November 21, 2025 at 6:08 AM
commonmugwort.bsky.social
Ruins Of Athens: Gkyzi
#Athens #UrbanPhotography
Colour photo. A small window in the semi-basement of an abandoned structure, probably a house. It’s on a slope and the grey pavement is angled, the whitewash surrounding the window meets it on a diagonal. The wall is grey too, but the shutters are white and blank not ridged, and there’s something appealing about the simplicity of it.
November 20, 2025 at 5:39 AM
commonmugwort.bsky.social
Ruins of Athens: Kountouriotika
#Athens #UrbanPhotography
Colour photograph. There’s a house on the left, but only the wall is in frame, weathered, peeling to plaster and brick. One window, very high up, with a plain grey shutter. There’s a concrete staircase climbing the height of the wall, straight up to some kind of tin-roofed terrace. The blood red paint on the gate and railings stands out against the dingy house. A courtyard at ground level, equally plain and equally shabby, surrounded by the tall blank walls of flanking apartment buildings, is brightened by a wooden door and window in the same vivid dark red.
November 19, 2025 at 6:10 AM
commonmugwort.bsky.social
Athens by evening - Gkyzi
#Athens #UrbanPhotography
Colour photo. There’s a lot going on here. It’s the door of an old house, open, with decorative grillework in horizontal blue-painted lines. There are fancy patterned encaustic tiles on the floor, and white marble stairs. The dwelling has been converted into a business, and the bright yellow light inside reveals crates of canned food piled on the stairs and a re fire extinguisher. There’s maybe an industrial countertop arrangement in the room at the top of the stairs.
November 18, 2025 at 5:29 AM
commonmugwort.bsky.social
Through the broken glass: Gouva
#Athens #UrbanPhotography #Abandoned #AbandonedPlaces
Colour photograph. Close-up on a mid century Athenian metal and glass door, the rim painted dark green and the vertical bars white. It’s a double door, the image centred on where the two sides meet. The aluminium handle is on the right, a hollow square folded into a hand-sized curve. The glass behind the bars is broken, just around the handle on both sides, and a padlock and chain keep the door shut. Through the glass, a glimpse of corridor. Colour photograph taken through the broken glass in the previous picture. Two vertical white metal bars and the edges of glass frame a dusty corridor leading to a lofty staircase. It’s the lobby of a small apartment building, or was. Below the staircase, a glimpse of cupboard doors and utility room, and beyond, the building is open to the back courtyard, where green leaves and a fire escape stair lead upwards.
November 17, 2025 at 6:44 AM
commonmugwort.bsky.social
Old Athens: Mets
#Athens #UrbanPhotography
Colour photograph. The side of a mid century dwelling, probably a three storey apartment building though possibly a family home. In frame, the concrete stairs, clad in pale grey marble and slightly darker concrete tile, with a plain grey railing, rusted. There’s a yellow paper cup and straw on the landing, which leads to a grey metal courtyard gate and railings. There’s building itself is painted pink, as are the fire escape stairs and railings beyond the gate, a large pipe, an outbuilding. In the background, sunlight in the walls of more typical Athenian apartment buildings, painted pale ochre beige, blue sky, a glimpse of tree.
November 16, 2025 at 7:25 AM
commonmugwort.bsky.social
Today in Athens graffiti, this sentiment, in two languages and three hands.
My favourite person is the one who not only corrected the French, but tried to match the writing in the original with inadequate tools.
(I miss you too, whoever you are).
Photo of a wall. Someone has written ‘tu me manque’ in black spray paint. A different person has added an s, in pen outline in the same size, and scribbled it in, attempting to match the spray paint. It’s a valiant effort, but nowhere near dark enough. It now reads ‘tu me manques’: I miss you. Underneath, a third person has added, in Greek “me too” in a different style. I’m tempted to add English.
November 15, 2025 at 6:56 AM
commonmugwort.bsky.social
Good morning, timeline.
Please accept a photo of these two cats in lieu of my participation in any of the ongoing discussions:
#Athens #Caturday #cats
Colour photo. A blue and white metal door near Varnava square. White marble-clad stairs below it. A cat, white with ginger ears and tail, hand upright, pretending to be asleep on the top stair. On the lowest stair, another cat, tortoisehell, ginger and white, stands, glaring at me until I go away or she makes a run for it. I went away.
November 15, 2025 at 6:09 AM
commonmugwort.bsky.social
Old Athens : am I blue

#Athens #UrbanPhotography #windowsOfAthens
Colour photo. The shuttered window of a semi-basement in an early to mid 20th Century apartment building. The shutters are painted wood, the sill a slab of white marble. Above, the concrete and marble sill of the ground floor window, which extends to a decorative element. But it’s the paint I took the picture for. To the right, the window surround is a slightly weathered white, and the façade one of the typical warm pale beige colours of old Athens buildings, this one less yellow than most. It’s the colour of the rest of the small apartment building. Except: to the left, a yellower beige paint has been recently applied, to surround as well as wall, a bit plasticky. This extends to the middle of the surround, and down the centre-line of the window. To the left of that line, the shutter is painted blue. To the right of it, is remains a weathered white, like the surround. It feels as much like a demarcation of territory as decoration, though maybe when I next go by there, everything will be in the newer colour scheme.
November 14, 2025 at 6:35 AM
commonmugwort.bsky.social
This is one of my favourite Ms. Aikaterini Marias.
#Athens #UrbanPhotography #StreetArt #MariaCallas
Colour photo. Ms Aikaterini is a street artist. She stencils Maria Callas with doves on urban utility boxes. This one has a crumbling base and is painted sky blue. The doves are yellow and the great diva has two hands by the left side of her face, as if she is resting her head on them. Kountouriotika
November 13, 2025 at 7:08 AM
commonmugwort.bsky.social
Now I know I can live my best life in Athens.
It’s a jar of Patak’s hot lime pickle, with French writing on it.
November 12, 2025 at 10:42 AM
commonmugwort.bsky.social
Ruins of Athens: Kountouriotika
#Athens #UrbanPhotography
Colour photo: The ruined wall of an abandoned house and the low garden wall in front of it. The house has a window with grey-painted shutters, the wall is typical Athenian yellow ochre, very faded and showing mud brick beneath. The garden wall was white once, concrete shows where the plaster has fallen.
November 12, 2025 at 6:22 AM
commonmugwort.bsky.social
IDEAL : Panepistimiou
#Athens #UrbanPhotography #GhostSign
Colour photo. A disused shop doorway on Panepistimiou Avenue in central Athens in which a bedroll, blanket, and pillow have been set up by someone sleeping rough there. Wide, plain, and made of white marble, the doorway is grimy and marked with graffiti. It used to have a sign above it reading IDEAL, the traces of which are still legible. The bedroll is covered by a red blanket, and there’s a poster pasted just outside, bearing in red, a hammer and sickle and the initials of the Spartacus - Comminist International party, in red.
November 11, 2025 at 8:41 AM
commonmugwort.bsky.social
Nice work, timeline.
A screenshot of two posts, Viv Bartlett’s late autumn cat at a window, and Liza Adamczewski’s gilded icon of a mouse painted in a window-like icon frame.
November 10, 2025 at 9:14 AM
commonmugwort.bsky.social
Abstract
#Athens #UrbanPhotography #StraightFromTheCamera
Colour photo. A wall, painted an orange umber long ago and is fading to pale concrete where it meets a stepped foundation painted terracotta red. A small horizontal pipe crosses both colours and is painted to match. Above it, a large, angled drainpipe is painted orange umber. In front of the wall, the crisp dark grey edge of a concrete ramp. The whole resembles a 20th Century abstract painting. Kountouriotika.
November 10, 2025 at 6:28 AM
commonmugwort.bsky.social
Ghost sign on ghost building.
#Athens #UrbanPhotography #BlackAndWhite #AbandonedBuildings #GhostSign
Black and white photo. The facade of an abandoned building. There would have been living space above. On the ground floor, the metal roll down blind remains, still padlocked, below a wooden window and a ghost sign which must have read Παντοπωλείο (literally everything seller - a grocery).
November 9, 2025 at 7:05 AM
commonmugwort.bsky.social
#Athens #UrbanPhotography #Cats #Caturday
A grey tabby and white cat lying on on a car roof in which they and the buildings behind them are reflected. The paws are tucked under the torso and the look on the feline face is of calm and superior reproach. This cat has had enough of my shit.
November 8, 2025 at 6:09 AM
commonmugwort.bsky.social
into the light
#Athens #UrbanPhotography
Colour photo. On a street in Exarcheia, down the pavement, underneath the columned overhang of a series of apartment buildings,a couple pushing a stroller walk towards a brightly lit cafe at the end of the street, silhouetted, the crossing shadows of support columns and trees, streetlight-cast, behind them.
November 7, 2025 at 5:58 AM
commonmugwort.bsky.social
Immortality Street
#Athens #UrbanPhotography #BlackAndWhite #AbandonedPlaces
Black and white photo. The interior of an abandoned house, taken through a gap in the locked door. Front hall, looking through to open glass doors and a large shuttered veranda window, light showing through, a chair and desk outlined against it. To left and right open doorways. A white globe light hangs above. On the wall to the left a street sign reads Immortality Street in Greek.
November 6, 2025 at 5:52 AM
commonmugwort.bsky.social
Even when your thing is alternative Athens, sometimes you just have to take the shot.
Colour photo. The Academy of Athens, an elaborate neoclassical building from the late 19th Century, at evening under a full moon. The moon hangs above the roof, between the two ionic order columns beside the building, the nearer one topped by a statue of the goddess Athena, the further by one of the god Apollo. The Greek flag at the roof peak in there too, the moon hanging between it and Athens’s shield, much smaller than either. It’s all very saccharine postcard and I should be sorry but I’m not.
November 4, 2025 at 6:11 AM
commonmugwort.bsky.social
Old Athens: Interlocking
#Athens #UrbanPhotography
Colour photo. The side of a mid 20th Century house in Athens, taken through the grillework of the gate, which is made of interlocking circles with a spray of three short metal bars in the centre like a stylised bouquet. The metalwork is painted cream, the house behind it - concrete stairs, terrazzo flooring, shuttered window, in shades of pale yellowish beige. I don’t know if anyone reads these, but the house is in Vyronas.
November 3, 2025 at 6:48 AM