Alexandros Delernias, an architect who has lived and worked in Marseille for the past thirty-five years, spoke about his personal journey from Leonteios School of Patissia and the National Technical University of Athens to France’s second-largest city in the late 1980s. Speaking on the Voice of Greece radio program “Our Global Voice” with Dimitris Kontogiannis, he reflected on the Marseille he first encountered and compared it with the city of today.
Delernias noted that Marseille continues to grow and modernize, while at the same time becoming poorer, as many older buildings remain unrestored and gradually succumb to the passage of time. Yet the city, he said, retains its character as a vibrant crossroads of peoples and cultures.
He also spoke about the local Greek community, with its schools and churches, noting that many third- and fourth-generation Greeks trace their roots back to Asia Minor and the Dodecanese.