title: Money in the Bank ladder match

text: The fifth annual Money in the Bank ladder match was announced for WrestleMania 25. Qualifying matches began on the February 23 episode of "Raw", in which CM Punk qualified by defeating John Morrison and The Miz in a triple threat match. On the March 2 episode of "Raw", Kane defeated Mike Knox and Rey Mysterio in another triple threat match. On the March 3 episode of "ECW", Mark Henry qualified for the match by defeating Santino Marella. Both Montel Vontavious Porter and Shelton Benjamin qualified for the match on the March 6 episode of "SmackDown", defeating Matt and Jeff Hardy in respective single matches. On the March 9 episode of "Raw", Kofi Kingston qualified by defeating Chris Jericho, after Jericho was distracted by Ric Flair. Christian qualified the following night on "ECW" by winning a tri-brand battle royal. Finlay was the final person to qualify for the match when he defeated The Brian Kendrick on the March 13 episode of "SmackDown".


title: Money in the Bank ladder match

text: At WrestleMania 25, Punk won the match and became the first wrestler to win two Money in the Bank ladder matches, and the only one to win the match for two consecutive years. On the May 1 episode of "SmackDown", Punk challenged the World Heavyweight Champion Edge for a non-title match with the intent that if he defeated Edge, he would cash in his title shot right after the match. Later that night, Punk defeated Edge and attempted to cash in. However, before the ringside bell could ring to start the title match, Punk and Edge were both attacked by Umaga and Jeff Hardy respectively. As a consequence, the match never started and Punk retained his contract. Punk again tried to cash in for a World Heavyweight Championship match against Edge on the May 15 episode of "SmackDown", but was again stopped by Umaga. After Jeff Hardy defeated Edge in a ladder match to win the World Heavyweight Championship at Extreme Rules, Punk cashed in to win the World Heavyweight Championship for the second time. As a result of the fans booing him for cashing on Hardy, who was very popular with the fans, Punk began a gradual change of character into a villain.


title: Money in the Bank ladder match

text: On the February 22 episode of "Raw", it was announced that the sixth annual Money in the Bank ladder match would take place at WrestleMania XXVI. The first qualifying match was held later that night, where Christian defeated Carlito to qualify. Three more qualifying matches were held on the February 26 episode of "SmackDown", with Dolph Ziggler defeating John Morrison and R-Truth in a Triple Threat match, Kane defeating Drew McIntyre, and Shelton Benjamin defeating CM Punk to qualify. The March 1 episode of "Raw" saw both Jack Swagger and Montel Vontavious Porter qualify by defeating Santino Marella and Zack Ryder respectively. Matt Hardy was the next to qualify for the match when he defeated Drew McIntyre on the March 5 episode of "SmackDown". In what was initially declared as the final qualifying match, Evan Bourne defeated William Regal on the March 8 episode of "Raw" to become the eighth competitor. Due to his favorable association with WWE Chairman Mr. McMahon, McIntyre was given a third chance on the March 12 episode of "SmackDown" to qualify for the match. In what would also be made a WWE Intercontinental Championship defense by SmackDown general manager Theodore Long, McIntyre defeated local competitor Aaron Bolo to qualify. On the March 22 episode of "Raw", the number of participants was once again increased to a record ten, when Kofi Kingston defeated Vladimir Kozlov to qualify.


title: Money in the Bank ladder match

text: At WrestleMania XXVI, Jack Swagger won the match after knocking Christian off a ladder with the briefcase itself. The following night on "Raw", Swagger attempted to cash in his shot against the WWE Champion John Cena after ambushing Cena. However, as Cena recovered too quickly from the ambush, Swagger cancelled his match and retained his contract. The next night, at the taping for the April 2, 2010 episode of "SmackDown", after Edge attacked then World Heavyweight Champion Chris Jericho, Swagger cashed in his contract and successfully claimed the World Heavyweight Championship.


title: Money in the Bank ladder match

text: In February 2010, WWE announced that "Money in the Bank" would be the title to their July 18 pay-per-view event at the Sprint Center in Kansas City, Missouri. The event included two Money in the Bank ladder matches, one for each brand. Unlike previous iterations of the match, the winners could only challenge for their own brand's World Championship. All eight competitors for the Raw brand's match were announced on the June 28 episode of "Raw" by guest host Rob Zombie. The eight competitors were Randy Orton, The Miz, R-Truth, Chris Jericho, Evan Bourne, Ted DiBiase, John Morrison and Edge. On the July 5th episode of "Raw", R-Truth was involved in an injury storyline with The Miz and was subsequently removed from the match and replaced by Mark Henry. Two days later, WWE announced six of the competitors for the SmackDown brand's match through its official website: Matt Hardy, Kane, Cody Rhodes, Christian, Kofi Kingston and Big Show. On the July 9 episode of "SmackDown", Drew McIntyre and Dolph Ziggler both competed in qualifying matches and were added to the match.


title: Money in the Bank ladder match

text: At the PPV, Kane won the SmackDown Money in the Bank match. Kane later cashed it in the same night by defeating Rey Mysterio to win the World Heavyweight Championship. He also became the quickest man to cash in the briefcase. For Raw, The Miz won that brand's Money in the Bank contract. After a couple of aborted attempts (which due to the bell not sounding to start the matches, allowed Miz to keep the briefcase on each occasion), Miz finally cashed in his title opportunity on the November 22, 2010 episode of "Raw", immediately after Randy Orton successfully retained the WWE Championship against Wade Barrett in which The Nexus attacked Orton before the match and injured his right leg. Miz defeated Orton to win his first WWE Championship.


title: Money in the Bank ladder match

text: The 2011 Money in the Bank pay-per-view took place on July 17 at the Allstate Arena in Rosemont, Illinois. Raw's Alberto Del Rio and SmackDown's Daniel Bryan won their respective brands' Money in the Bank ladder matches. At the end of the night, after CM Punk won the WWE Championship from John Cena, Mr. McMahon ordered Del Rio to come in and attempt to cash in his briefcase against Punk, who had threatened to leave the company after the pay-per-view, as his contract was expiring. Del Rio came out to do so, but Punk attacked him and fled through the crowd. A similar cash-in attempt was performed on then-champion Rey Mysterio on the July 25, 2011, episode of "Raw", but Del Rio was again unable to cash in the briefcase. Del Rio was able to cash in his briefcase and defeated CM Punk for the WWE Championship at the 2011 SummerSlam event on August 14.


title: Money in the Bank ladder match

text: On the July 22, 2011, episode of "SmackDown", Bryan announced that he was going to cash his contract in at WrestleMania XXVIII in April 2012. On the November 25, 2011, episode of "SmackDown", Bryan cashed in on World Heavyweight Champion Mark Henry, who had been knocked out by The Big Show. Bryan got the pinfall victory and was awarded the championship, however SmackDown General Manager Theodore Long overruled the match due to Henry not being medically cleared to compete, the first time a Money in the Bank cash-in match was reversed. Since the match never officially took place, Bryan was given the briefcase back and again reiterated that he planned on cashing in at WrestleMania XXVIII, although he was given a shot at the World Heavyweight Championship against Henry in a steel cage match on a live holiday-themed episode of "SmackDown" the following Tuesday, which Bryan lost. On December 18, at the event, after Big Show defeated Henry to win the World Heavyweight Championship, Henry attacked Big Show with a steel chair, allowing Bryan to cash in his briefcase on Big Show to win his first World Heavyweight Championship.


title: Money in the Bank ladder match

text: The 2012 Money in the Bank pay-per-view took place on July 15 at the US Airways Center in Phoenix, Arizona. There were the usual two Money in the Bank ladder matches; however, the matches were no longer separated by brands, as both Raw and SmackDown by this time had become full roster "Supershows". Instead, they were separated by championships (WWE and World Heavyweight).


title: Money in the Bank ladder match

text: In the first match of the night, Dolph Ziggler defeated seven other competitors to win the World Heavyweight Championship match contract. All of the world title Money in the Bank competitors in world title ladder match also won qualifying matches. He attempted to cash it in that same night against Sheamus but was attacked before the referee could call for the bell so he retained his contract. On the August 20 episode of "Raw", Ziggler successfully defended his briefcase against Chris Jericho in career vs. contract match. As a result, Jericho was forced to leave WWE. On the December 3 episode of "Raw", managing supervisor Vickie Guerrero was forced by Mr. McMahon to make Cena and Ziggler's match at the event a ladder match for Ziggler's Money in the Bank contract. On December 16, at the event, he successfully defended the briefcase with help from AJ Lee. On April 8, 2013, an episode of "Raw", Ziggler cashed in his contract on World Heavyweight Champion Alberto Del Rio, following Del Rio's handicap match win over Jack Swagger and Zeb Colter. Ziggler defeated Del Rio to win his second World Heavyweight Championship following nearly nine months of holding the briefcase.


title: Money in the Bank ladder match

text: In the last match of 2012 event, John Cena defeated Kane, Big Show, The Miz, and Chris Jericho to win the WWE Championship Money in the Bank briefcase in his first Money in the Bank ladder match. A special stipulation had been added beforehand that only former WWE Champions could participate in the WWE Championship Money in the Bank ladder match for 2012. Cena won when the briefcase's handle snapped off while using it against Big Show, having previously blocked Show's KO Punch with it. On the July 16, 2012, episode of "Raw", Cena announced that he would cash his contract in the following week at "Raw 1000". He became only the second wrestler after Rob Van Dam to give prior notice to the opponent. At "Raw 1000", Cena failed to win the WWE title when Big Show interfered in the match, causing champion CM Punk to be disqualified and retain the title, as championships cannot change hands via disqualification unless otherwise stipulated. This made Cena the first Money in the Bank winner to fail to win a title.


title: Money in the Bank ladder match

text: The 2013 Money in the Bank pay-per-view took place on July 14 at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. There was the traditional two Money in the Bank ladder matches: one for a WWE Championship match contract and the other for a World Heavyweight Championship match contract. On the June 24, 2013, episode of "Raw", CM Punk, Daniel Bryan, Randy Orton, Sheamus, Christian, Kane, and Rob Van Dam were announced by WWE Chief Brand Officer Stephanie McMahon as the participants in the WWE Championship contract match. Kane was later removed after being injured due to an attack by The Wyatt Family on the July 8 episode of "Raw". Orton went on to win the contract at the event. At the 2013 SummerSlam event on August 18, Orton cashed in his contract on WWE Champion Daniel Bryan, who had defeated John Cena to win the championship. Orton defeated Bryan to win his seventh WWE Championship, after WWE COO Triple H, who was the special guest referee between Bryan and Cena, attacked Bryan with a Pedigree, following five weeks of holding the briefcase.


title: Money in the Bank ladder match

text: At the tapings for "SmackDown" on June 25 (aired June 28), SmackDown Senior Advisor Theodore Long announced that the participants in the World Heavyweight Championship contract match would be WWE United States Champion Dean Ambrose, Fandango, Antonio Cesaro, Jack Swagger, Wade Barrett, Cody Rhodes and Damien Sandow. Sandow won the contract at the event. On the October 28, 2013, episode of "Raw", Sandow cashed in his contract on World Heavyweight Champion John Cena. Cena defeated Sandow, making Sandow the second wrestler to unsuccessfully cash in the contract and the first to lose a cash-in match via pinfall. At the event on December 15, the WWE and World Heavyweight championships were unified into the WWE World Heavyweight Championship.


title: Money in the Bank ladder match

text: The 2014 Money in the Bank pay-per-view took place on June 29 at the TD Garden in Boston, Massachusetts. The original plan for the event was that the winner of the ladder match would receive a contract for a match for the now unified title as normal. On June 9, defending WWE World Heavyweight Champion Daniel Bryan was forced to vacate the title due to a neck injury, and the already announced ladder match consisting of John Cena, Randy Orton, Alberto Del Rio, Bray Wyatt, Cesaro, Sheamus, Kane, and Roman Reigns became for the vacant championship instead.


title: Money in the Bank ladder match

text: On the June 17 episode of "Main Event", Seth Rollins announced that in addition to the ladder match for the title, there would be a traditional Money in the Bank ladder match for a WWE World Heavyweight Championship match contract at the event, and that Rollins would be the first entrant. Further entrants were Bad News Barrett, Dolph Ziggler, Rob Van Dam, Jack Swagger, Kofi Kingston, and Dean Ambrose. The latter, who had threatened to disrupt the match, was added to the match on Rollins' request. Bad News Barrett was later removed from the match due to an injury.


title: Money in the Bank ladder match

text: Rollins won the match and the contract after Kane interfered on behalf of The Authority and knocked Dean Ambrose off the ladder. He attempted to cash in the following night on new champion John Cena but was stopped from doing so by Ambrose. Rollins once again failed to cash in his Money in the Bank briefcase, this time against WWE World Heavyweight Champion Brock Lesnar at the 2014 Night of Champions event in September, after attacking him with a Curb Stomp. This failed attempt to cash in came after Cena attacked Rollins, before the bell could be rung, due to Rollins costing him the championship minutes earlier.


title: Money in the Bank ladder match

text: At WrestleMania 31 in March 2015, Rollins cashed in his briefcase during the main event championship match between defending champion Brock Lesnar and challenger Roman Reigns. By doing so, he turned the singles match between Lesnar and Reigns into a triple threat match. Rollins then proceeded to pin Reigns following a Curb Stomp and successfully captured the WWE World Heavyweight Championship. As a result, Rollins set various records: he became the first person to cash in a contract while a championship match was in progress, he became the first person to cash in his briefcase at WrestleMania, and he became the first to win the championship without pinning the champion during the cash-in match.


title: Money in the Bank ladder match

text: The 2015 Money in the Bank pay-per-view took place on June 14 in Columbus, Ohio. Dolph Ziggler, Sheamus, Kofi Kingston, Neville, Roman Reigns, Randy Orton, and Kane participated in the traditional Money in the Bank ladder match. Sheamus won the match and received a WWE World Heavyweight Championship match contract.


title: Money in the Bank ladder match

text: At the 2015 Survivor Series event on November 22, Sheamus cashed in his contract by defeating Reigns, who had just won the vacant championship after defeating Dean Ambrose in the tournament finals.


title: Money in the Bank ladder match

text: On June 19, the seventh annual Money in the Bank pay-per-view took place in Las Vegas. For the traditional Money in the Bank ladder match, Sami Zayn, Kevin Owens, Cesaro, Chris Jericho, Alberto Del Rio, and Dean Ambrose all won their qualifying matches on the May 23 episode of "Raw" to become entrants into the match. Originally slated to be a 7-man ladder match, the seventh slot was later removed. Ambrose won the match and received a WWE World Heavyweight Championship match contract. After the conclusion of the main event, he successfully cashed in the contract on Seth Rollins, who had just won the title from Roman Reigns. Ambrose was the second wrestler to cash in the contract on the same night as winning it. The night was also notable due to it making the stable The Shield the first group in WWE history to be world champions on the same night.


title: Money in the Bank ladder match

text: The 2017 Money in the Bank pay-per-view took place on June 18 at the Scottrade Center in St. Louis, Missouri as an exclusive event for the SmackDown brand. For the traditional ladder match, which had a contract for a match for SmackDown's WWE Championship (formerly WWE World Heavyweight Championship), SmackDown Commissioner Shane McMahon announced AJ Styles, Shinsuke Nakamura, Dolph Ziggler, Sami Zayn, and Baron Corbin as the original five participants. United States Champion Kevin Owens was added after he convinced Shane to make him the sixth participant. Mojo Rawley had the opportunity to make it a seven-man match if he could defeat WWE Champion Jinder Mahal, but failed to do so. At the event, Baron Corbin won the match and received a WWE Championship match contract. On the August 15, 2017 episode of "SmackDown Live", John Cena had a non-title match against WWE Champion Jinder Mahal. As Cena was pinning Mahal, Corbin attacked him, causing a disqualification. Corbin then cashed in his Money in the Bank contract on Mahal, but as soon as the bell rung, he attacked Cena, who was on the apron, allowing Mahal to quickly roll-up Corbin for the win. This made Corbin the third wrestler to unsuccessfully cash in the contract and the second to lose a cash-in match.


title: Money in the Bank ladder match

text: On the May 30 episode of "SmackDown Live", another Money in the Bank ladder match was added to the event, and for the first time, involving women. Charlotte Flair, Becky Lynch, Natalya, Carmella, and Tamina were originally scheduled to compete in a fatal five-way elimination match on that night to determine the number one contender for the SmackDown Women's Championship against Naomi at Money in the Bank. Before their match could begin, a brawl broke out between the five and the match never occurred. SmackDown Commissioner Shane McMahon then scheduled the five to compete in the first-ever women's Money in the Bank ladder match at the event where the winner would receive a contract for a SmackDown Women's Championship match. Carmella won the match after James Ellsworth retrieved the briefcase, and threw it to her. On the following episode of "SmackDown Live", however, SmackDown General Manager Daniel Bryan forced Carmella to relinquish the briefcase since Ellsworth retrieved it for her. On that same episode, Bryan also scheduled a Money in the Bank ladder match rematch for the June 27 episode with Ellsworth banned from ringside (later from the arena). That episode, Carmella, with some aid from the banned Ellsworth, retrieved the briefcase herself and reclaimed the SmackDown Women's Championship match contract. On the April 10, 2018 episode of "SmackDown Live", after holding the contract for 287 days (the longest time any wrestler has held on to a Money in the Bank briefcase), Carmella cashed in and defeated Charlotte Flair—who had just suffered an attack from the debuting The IIconics (Peyton Royce and Billie Kay)—for the SmackDown Women's Championship.


title: Money in the Bank ladder match

text: The 2018 Money in the Bank pay-per-view took place on June 17 at the Allstate Arena in the Chicago suburb of Rosemont, Illinois. For the first time since 2011 with a brand split in effect, the event became dual-branded, involving both the Raw and SmackDown brands. The event included one male match and one female match with eight participants each, evenly divided between the brands. The contracts granted the winners a match for the world championship of their respective brand. The men's contract granted the winner a match for either Raw's Universal Championship or SmackDown's WWE Championship, while the women's contract granted the winner a Raw Women's Championship or SmackDown Women's Championship match.


title: Money in the Bank ladder match

text: Qualification matches for both ladder matches began on the May 7 episode of "Raw". For the men's match, Braun Strowman, Finn Bálor, Bobby Roode, and Kevin Owens qualified from Raw, while The Miz, Rusev, a member of The New Day (revealed to be Kofi Kingston at the event), and Samoa Joe qualified from SmackDown. Strowman would go on to win the ladder match and contract. During the ladder match, Strowman threw Owens off the top of a ladder and Owens crashed through a table. The two would then feud, leading to a match at SummerSlam where Strowman defended his contract against Owens with the stipulation being that if Strowman lost by any means, he would lose the contract. Strowman, however, retained the contract. He would then become the third person to announce their cash-in match ahead of time. He first announced that he would cash-in on the winner of the SummerSlam main event match between defending Universal Champion Brock Lesnar and Roman Reigns, but during that match, he was incapacitated by Lesnar, and thus did not cash-in (this distraction would allow Reigns to defeat Lesnar for the title). He then announced that he would cash-in on new champion Roman Reigns at Hell in a Cell in a Hell in a Cell match (Mick Foley was later added as the special guest referee). The match, however, ended in a no-contest after Lesnar appeared and laid out both men, rendering them unable to continue. Strowman became the fourth person to fail in gaining a championship in their cash-in match, and the first to fail by a no-contest ruling.


title: Money in the Bank ladder match

text: For the women's match, Ember Moon, Alexa Bliss, Natalya, and Sasha Banks qualified from Raw, while Charlotte Flair, Becky Lynch, Lana, and Naomi qualified from SmackDown. Bliss would win the ladder match and later that night, she would cause a disqualification in the Raw Women's Championship match between defending champion Nia Jax and Ronda Rousey, and then cashed in the contract and defeated Jax to win the title, thus becoming the third wrestler (and first woman) to cash in her contract on the same night as winning it.


title: Money in the Bank ladder match

text: The 2019 Money in the Bank pay-per-view took place on May 19 at the XL Center in Hartford, Connecticut. Like the 2018 event, there was one male ladder match and one female ladder match with eight participants each, evenly divided between the Raw and SmackDown brands. Unlike 2018, however, the contracts granted the winners a match for the world championship of their choice. The men's contract granted the winner a match for either Raw's Universal Championship or SmackDown's WWE Championship, while the women's contract granted the winner a Raw Women's Championship or SmackDown Women's Championship match.


title: Money in the Bank ladder match

text: Raw's four participants for the men's match were announced by Alexa Bliss during her "A Moment of Bliss" segment on the April 29 episode of "Raw": Braun Strowman, Ricochet, Drew McIntyre, and Baron Corbin. SmackDown's four participants were announced the following night on "SmackDown": Ali, Finn Bálor, Andrade, and Randy Orton. Robert Roode (formerly Bobby Roode) had the chance to replace Ricochet in the ladder match if he could defeat Ricochet, but was unsuccessful, while Sami Zayn, who was assisted by Corbin and McIntyre, defeated Strowman in a falls count anywhere match to take Strowman's spot. During the event prior to the match, Zayn was attacked backstage and taken to a medical facility. Strowman was alleged as the attacker and was asked to leave the arena, despite denying the claim. The match pursued without an announced replacement for Zayn, however, at the climax of the match, Brock Lesnar made a surprise return as Zayn's unannounced replacement and won the contract. After teasing cashing in on Universal Champion Seth Rollins and WWE Champion Kofi Kingston and failing an attempt to cash-in on Rollins at Super ShowDown, Lesnar successfully cashed in his contract to win the Universal Championship from Rollins at Extreme Rules on July 14, right after Rollins and Raw Women's Champion Becky Lynch had retained their respective titles against Baron Corbin and Lacey Evans in a Last Chance Winners Take All Extreme Rules mixed tag team match. This made Lesnar the first wrestler to successfully cash in on the Universal Championship.


title: Money in the Bank ladder match

text: The four participants from Raw in the women's match were also announced by Alexa Bliss during another "A Moment of Bliss" segment on the April 29 episode of "Raw": Natalya, Dana Brooke, Naomi, and Bliss herself. On the following night's episode of "SmackDown", Bayley, Mandy Rose, Ember Moon, and Carmella were revealed as SmackDown's four participants. On May 16, it was revealed that Bliss was not medically cleared to compete and was replaced by Nikki Cross. Bayley would go on and win the match and later that night, she cashed in her contract on Charlotte Flair, who had just defeated Becky Lynch for the SmackDown Women's Championship, and defeated Flair to win the title. This made her the fourth wrestler (and second woman) to cash in her contract on the same night as winning it.


title: Money in the Bank ladder match

text: The 2020 Money in the Bank pay-per-view aired on May 10. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was not held at its originally announced venue of Royal Farms Arena in Baltimore, and the majority of its matches were presented live from the WWE Performance Center in Orlando.


title: Money in the Bank ladder match

text: The eponymous ladder matches were retooled to use a pre-recorded format with cinematic elements, and were filmed within WWE's global headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut. The participants in each match began on the ground floor and fought their way to a ring on the roof, which the briefcases were suspended above. Both the men's and women's Money in the Bank matches occurred at the same time.


title: Money in the Bank ladder match

text: With the changes in format, the participants in each match were reduced from eight to six, but still evenly divided between the Raw and SmackDown brands. For the women's match, Asuka, Shayna Baszler, and the returning Nia Jax qualified from Raw by defeating Ruby Riott, Sarah Logan, and Kairi Sane, respectively, while Dana Brooke, Lacey Evans, and Carmella filled out the SmackDown spots by defeating Naomi, Sasha Banks, and Mandy Rose, respectively. For the men's match, Aleister Black, Apollo Crews, and Rey Mysterio qualified from Raw by defeating Austin Theory, Montel Vontavious Porter, and Murphy, respectively, while Daniel Bryan, King Corbin, and Otis qualified from SmackDown by defeating Cesaro, Drew Gulak, and Dolph Ziggler, respectively. Crews, however, was injured by Andrade and was pulled from the match. A returning AJ Styles won Raw's vacant spot by winning a last chance gauntlet match.


title: Money in the Bank ladder match

text: The women's match began in the lobby of the building, while the men's match began in the gym. The men and women eventually ran into each other and had a food fight before splitting off to continue their ascent to the roof. The women's match concluded first after Asuka retrieved the women's briefcase, granting her a guaranteed match of her choice for either the Raw or SmackDown Women's Championship. Shortly afterwards, Otis won the men's match by getting the men's briefcase, granting him a guaranteed match for a world championship of his choice; either Raw's WWE Championship or SmackDown's Universal Championship.


title: Money in the Bank ladder match

text: The next night on "Raw", Raw Women's Champion Becky Lynch announced that she would be going on hiatus. A confused Asuka then came out. Lynch stated that by Asuka winning the women's Money in the Bank ladder match, she actually won the Raw Women's Championship and proceeded to open the briefcase, revealing the title belt inside. Lynch told Asuka that she was pregnant, hence the reason for her hiatus. This in turn became the first time that the champion relinquished the title to the Money in the Bank winner without having a cash-in match.


title: Money in the Bank ladder match

text: After winning the men's contract, Otis teased cashing in on Universal Champion Braun Strowman, but decided not to. After entering into a feud with The Miz and John Morrison over the Money in the Bank contract in September, Otis was forced to defend the contract in a match against Miz at the 2020 Hell in a Cell event in October, where Miz defeated Otis to win the Money in the Bank contract, thus Otis became the second wrestler to lose his contract in a scheduled match without cashing it in. The Miz then used the contract to cash in on the WWE Championship at on December 20. At the event, while Drew McIntyre was defending the title against AJ Styles in a Tables, Ladders, and Chairs match, midway through, The Miz came out and cashed in the contract, converting the match into a triple threat TLC match. Despite this, McIntyre retained. However, on the December 28 episode of "Raw", the cash-in at TLC was ruled invalid due to Morrison cashing in the contract on behalf of Miz, as only the contract holder himself can cash it in, and thus the briefcase was returned to Miz. At Elimination Chamber on February 21, 2021, Miz officially cashed in the contract, defeating McIntyre (who had just retained the title in an Elimination Chamber match and was then attacked by Bobby Lashley) to win the WWE Championship for a second time, with both times occurring via Money in the Bank cash-ins.


title: Money in the Bank ladder match

text: The 2021 Money in the Bank pay-per-view took place on July 18, at the Dickies Arena in Fort Worth, Texas, marking the first event in the series to be held in Texas, and WWE's first pay-per-view held following their resumption of live touring that began with the July 16 episode of "SmackDown". With the event back in front of a live audience, the Money in the Bank ladder matches returned to their regular format with each having eight participants evenly divided between the Raw and SmackDown brands.


title: Money in the Bank ladder match

text: Qualification matches for both ladder matches began on the June 21 episode of "Raw". For the men's match, Ricochet, John Morrison, Riddle, and Drew McIntyre qualified from Raw, while Big E, Kevin Owens, King Nakamura, and Seth Rollins qualified from SmackDown. Big E would go on to win the men's ladder match, granting him a guaranteed match of his choice for either Raw's WWE Championship or SmackDown's Universal Championship. Big E would then announce via Twitter that he would cash in his contract on the September 13 episode of "Raw", becoming the fourth person to announce their cash-in match ahead of time, and would proceed to do so on WWE Champion Bobby Lashley after Lashley had just retained the title against Randy Orton, defeating Lashley to win the title.


title: Money in the Bank ladder match

text: For the women's match, Asuka, Naomi, Alexa Bliss, and Nikki A.S.H. qualified from Raw. No qualifying matches took place for SmackDown, and instead, WWE official Sonya Deville appointed the participants: a returning Zelina Vega, Liv Morgan, and WWE Women's Tag Team Champions Natalya and Tamina; Carmella was originally announced for the ladder match but was later removed and replaced by Morgan after receiving an opportunity for the SmackDown Women's Championship. Nikki A.S.H. would go on to win the women's ladder match, granting her a guaranteed match of her choice for either the Raw or SmackDown Women's Championship. The next night on "Raw", Nikki cashed-in the contract and won the Raw Women's Championship from Charlotte Flair, who had just retained the title in a match against Rhea Ripley.


title: Money in the Bank ladder match

text: The 2022 Money in the Bank took place on Saturday, July 2, 2022, at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in the Las Vegas suburb of Paradise, Nevada; it was originally scheduled to be held at the city's Allegiant Stadium. The ladder matches were scheduled to feature seven participants with an uneven division between the brands; the men's match added an eighth, last minute entrant which evened out the brand division but the women's match had four participants from Raw and three from SmackDown.


title: Money in the Bank ladder match

text: Qualifying matches for the men's Money in the Bank ladder match began on the June 10 episode of "SmackDown". A qualifier between Drew McIntyre and Sheamus ended in a double disqualification, after both men attacked each other with steel chairs, thus neither qualified. The following week, however, WWE official Adam Pearce announced that both McIntyre and Sheamus would be in the match. Seth "Freakin" Rollins became the first to qualify from Raw after he defeated AJ Styles on the June 13 episode of "Raw". The following week, Omos and Sami Zayn became the fourth and fifth entrants after defeating Riddle and Shinsuke Nakamura, respectively. The following week on "Raw", Riddle won a Last Chance Battle Royal by last eliminating The Miz to be the sixth qualified entrant, while Madcap Moss won a fatal four-way match on the July 1 episode of "SmackDown" to become the seventh and (what was thought to be) final entrant in the match. The men's match served as the main event, and just as the match was about to begin, WWE official Adam Pearce announced that Raw's Theory would be added as a surprise eighth entrant, who would go on and win the match. After failed attempts to cash in on the Undisputed WWE Universal Championship, as well as a tease of cashing in on the NXT Championship, Theory finally used the contract to challenge Seth "Freakin" Rollins for the WWE United States Championship on the November 7, 2022, episode of "Raw", but failed to win the title due to an attack by Bobby Lashley, allowing Rollins to pin Theory and retain. This marked the first time the contract was used on a non-world championship.


title: Money in the Bank ladder match

text: Qualifying matches for the women's Money in the Bank ladder match also began on the June 10 episode of "SmackDown". Lacey Evans became the first qualified entrant by defeating Xia Li. The following week on "Raw" and "SmackDown", Alexa Bliss and Liv Morgan defeated Doudrop and Nikki A.S.H. in a tag team qualifier to win two spots in the match, and Raquel Rodriguez defeated Shayna Baszler to earn the fourth spot in the match. The following week on "Raw" and "SmackDown", Asuka and Shotzi became the fifth and sixth qualified entrants after defeating Becky Lynch and Tamina, respectively. The following week on "Raw", Becky Lynch won a Last Chance Elimination Match by defeating Doudrop, Nikki A.S.H., Shayna Baszler, Tamina, and Xia Li to become the last qualified entrant. Liv Morgan would go on to win the women's ladder match and later that night, cashed in on SmackDown Women's Champion Ronda Rousey after Rousey had just retained the title against Natalya. Morgan would pin Rousey to win the championship.


title: Barack Obama Presidential Center

text: The Barack Obama Presidential Center is a planned architectural project in Chicago to commemorate the presidency of Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States. The center will include a museum and library and is headed by the nonprofit Obama Foundation.


title: Barack Obama Presidential Center

text: The center's work includes digitizing the Barack Obama Presidential Library with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), to create the first fully digitized presidential library. The Library is administered by NARA, which will preserve hardcopies of documents at a separate NARA facility; however, many will be loaned to the Presidential Center for display.


title: Barack Obama Presidential Center

text: The center will be located in Jackson Park on the South Side of Chicago, adjacent to the University of Chicago campus. The university provides planning, support, engagement and programming. Included within the center's plans is a new branch for the Chicago Public Library.


title: Barack Obama Presidential Center

text: Federal review ended in December 2020, with final completion in 2021. Construction began in August 2021.


title: Barack Obama Presidential Center

text: The Obama Foundation board includes Chairman Marty Nesbitt, a close friend from Chicago; J. Kevin Poorman, president and CEO of PSP Capital Partners; David Plouffe; Obama's half-sister Maya Soetoro-Ng; venture capital financier John Doerr; Studio Museum in Harlem Director and Chief Curator Thelma Golden; fundraiser and former White House Social Secretary Julianna Smoot; investment managers John Rogers and Michael Sacks; and former Governor of Massachusetts Deval Patrick. Barack Obama has a home in Hyde Park. The foundation was formally established in January 2014.


title: Barack Obama Presidential Center

text: Louise Bernard, outgoing Director of Exhibitions at NYPL, was named director of the Museum of the Obama Presidential Center in May 2017. Michael Strautmanis became the vice-president of civic engagement for the foundation in 2016.


title: Barack Obama Presidential Center

text: In 2014 the Obama Foundation released details for institutions interested in being the location of the center.


title: Barack Obama Presidential Center

text: In May 2015 the foundation's board announced it had decided to build the center in partnership with the University of Chicago. Obama taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004.


title: Barack Obama Presidential Center

text: After the foundation's board had selected to build the center in partnership with the University of Chicago they began deciding between two possible locations, Washington Park and Jackson Park. They ultimately selected Jackson Park.


title: Barack Obama Presidential Center

text: In 2018, the Obama Foundation released the proposed bid by the University of Chicago, and the three other universities. The 2014 bid revealed that the University of Chicago included various plans, such as combining the golf courses at South Shore and Jackson Park into a single “world class facility,” and the closing of Cornell Drive and other streets in the vicinity of Jackson Park in order to improve the connecting green space for museums located in a nearby area known as "Museum Campus South".


title: Barack Obama Presidential Center

text: The University of Chicago, the University of Illinois at Chicago, the University of Hawaii, and Columbia University submitted proposals to host the institution. In May 2015, the Barack Obama Foundation and Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel announced that the foundation and the Barack Obama Presidential Center would be located in Chicago's South Side, and would be built in partnership with the University of Chicago. Both the former president and his wife Michelle Obama stressed the importance of Chicago's South Side as an influence in their own lives. She said, "One of my greatest honors is being a proud Chicagoan, a daughter of the South Side. I still lead with that descriptor. I wear it boldly and proudly like a crown."


title: Barack Obama Presidential Center

text: A design advisory committee assisted in the selection of the architects. Members of the committee included sculptor Don Gummer (the husband of actress Meryl Streep); Ed Schlossberg of ESI Design (husband of Caroline Kennedy, the former U.S. ambassador to Japan); Fred Eychaner, a Chicago radio station owner and Democratic financier; and "Architectural Digest" magazine editor Margaret Russell. Seven architectural firms were announced as finalists in December 2015 from an initial list of 140 applicants: John Ronan Architects, Adjaye Associates, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Renzo Piano Building Workshop, SHoP Architects, Snøhetta, and Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects.


title: Barack Obama Presidential Center

text: In June 2016, the foundation chose New York-based Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects and Chicago-based Interactive Design Architects to jointly lead the design and engineering of the center. For the exhibition design, Ralph Appelbaum Associates, which worked on the National Museum of African American History, will lead a team including Civic Projects, Normal, and several local artists. The landscape architect is Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, with Site Design Group, and Living Habitats. Lakeside Alliance, which includes Turner Construction and a consortium of local African-American owned firms: Powers & Sons Construction, UJAMAA Construction, Brown & Momen, Safeway Construction, and Kates Security Services will build the center.


title: Barack Obama Presidential Center

text: Two parks near the University of Chicago's campus, Jackson Park and Washington Park, were considered. On July 29, 2016, the foundation announced the selection of portion of Jackson Park in the Woodlawn neighborhood. Jackson Park, designed by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, already houses the Museum of Science and Industry and a golf course.


title: Barack Obama Presidential Center

text: Preliminary plans were unveiled in May 2017, involving three buildings in geometric shapes covered in light-colored stone, roughly . The museum building (which will also include educational and meeting space) will be the tallest at . The other buildings, a library building and a forum building, will be a single story. The latter building will feature an auditorium, a restaurant, and a public garden. In 2018, the center announced an agreement to place a Chicago Public Library branch within the complex.


title: Barack Obama Presidential Center

text: The unveiled plan incorporates the Jackson Park end of Midway Plaisance from the north (which would be readapted as a circular green space surrounding a water basin), and the entirety of the park's hockey field and adjoining parkland to the south, where the main buildings and new park landscaping are to be sited. As part of a wider plan to reclaim parkland and improve park safety, the project also necessitates the closure, between 60th and 67th streets, of South Cornell Drive, a 6-lane thoroughfare that runs along the western park lagoon and the park's golf course from Midway Plaisance to South Shore. Without improvements to other roadways that will accommodate local traffic, these closures will result in nine intersections in the area to operate over capacity causing substantial traffic delays. These infrastructure changes would not be paid for by the Obama Foundation, and would require government funding, expected to cost the city $175 million.


title: Barack Obama Presidential Center

text: The Obama Library South Side Community Benefits Agreement Coalition, a coalition of 19 community and activist groups, is seeking a community benefits agreement to require that the Obama Foundation, in partnership with the City of Chicago, set aside jobs for residents in the local communities, protect low-income housing and home owners, support and create Black businesses, and strengthen neighborhood schools. Some residents have concerns about rising property taxes and rents that could displace many of the low-income Black residents. Recent rent increases for residents living directly across from the site escalated concerns of displacement of residents, particularly those who have fixed incomes, and has drawn protests against local Aldermen who are in opposition of a community benefits agreement. As of 2018, the Obama Foundation has so far refused to consider a community benefits agreement.


title: Barack Obama Presidential Center

text: The foundation has announced plans for community hiring. An economic impact assessment estimates that about 28% of the 4,945 short-term construction jobs would go to South Side residents, with the remainder to the rest of Cook County. About 2,175 of the 2,536 long-term jobs would to go South Side residents, with the remainder to residents in rest of Cook County. It is estimated that the long-term jobs will bring in about $104 million in annual income to Cook County residents, or about $41,000 per job.


title: Barack Obama Presidential Center

text: In July 2019, local aldermen Jeanette Taylor and Leslie Hairston introduced an ordinance aimed at protecting affordable housing near the development. The ordinance would require 30% of new units built in a 2-mile radius of the development to be affordable and offer right of first refusal for nearby tenants, among other benefits. The ordinance earned support from nearly 30 aldermen in Chicago City Council. In January 2020, Mayor Lori Lightfoot's administration announced that it would support a scaled-back version of a Community Benefits Agreement ordinance, but Taylor re-iterated support for the original ordinance.


title: Barack Obama Presidential Center

text: In July 2020, the Lightfoot administration and aldermen Taylor agreed on a compromise ordinance that went further than the administration's earlier proposal. The compromise ordinance would require that 30% of units on 52 city-owned lots in Woodlawn be reserved for residents making between 30% and 50% of the Area Median Income, that any building refinanced through the Preservation of Existing Affordable Rentals program must reserve 10% of units for those making less than 30% of the AMI and 10% for those making less than 50% of the AMI, that the city's Housing Department request $675,000 in federal funds to support a local program to promote homeownership among current residents, and that eligibility restrictions be loosened for Woodlawn's Home Improvement Grant Program. The compromise was reached after negotiations between the administration, aldermen Taylor and Hairston, the CBA Coalition, and other community groups. Taylor called the compromise ordinance a "step in the right direction" and, along with members of the CBA coalition, called for further action.


title: Barack Obama Presidential Center

text: The nonprofit group Friends of the Parks opposes the loss of parkland to build the center and had threatened a lawsuit to block development. In May 2018, the preservationist group "Protect Our Parks" filed a lawsuit, to prevent the part of Jackson Park, which dates from 1893, from being taken from the public and given to a private entity. Mayor Emanuel was critical of the lawsuit. Later that month, the plan to build the center was approved by the Chicago Plan Commission.


title: Barack Obama Presidential Center

text: In early August 2018, the Chicago Park District began cutting trees to relocate park facilities, with the most notable being the Jackson Park athletic field. On September 17, 2018, the Chicago Park District suspended its construction related to the Center following meetings with the National Park Service and the Federal Highway Administration. On September 18, 2018, it was announced that the center will be owned by the city of Chicago once completed and that the Obama Foundation will not receive the tax-based operating or capital support, nor the perpetual leases which the 11 other museums in the city parks obtain.


title: Barack Obama Presidential Center

text: Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel submitted two ordinances to the Chicago City Council on September 20: the first would grant the Obama Foundation a 99-year lease on the Jackson Park site for $10.00 with various restrictions on the foundation's use, in return for the foundation's financial responsibility for maintaining and operating the city-owned project; the second allows the city to plow under Cornell Drive from 59th Street to Hayes Drive in order to reconfigure this area as green space. The Chicago Department of Planning and Development (DPD) ordinance amended a 2015 agreement with the park district concerning the Obama Presidential Center. Under the new ordinance, the Presidential Center will comply with the Museum Act's free admission days requirements. Parking fees for the center will also be regulated so they are consistent with the rates charged at the Museum of Science and Industry or in the North Garage adjacent to the Field Museum. The ordinance will also ensure that these parking fees may solely be used to finance the center's operations, maintenance, management, and endowment funding. On October 31, 2018, the Chicago city council unanimously approved the new proposals for the Obama Presidential Center. Mayor Emanuel afterwards read a letter of thanks written by former President Obama.


title: Barack Obama Presidential Center

text: On October 24, 2018, U.S. District Judge John Robert Blakey held a status conference in the lawsuit filed by the group Protect Our Parks to prevent construction in Jackson Park. Blakey indicated that both sides want a quick resolution and the court will not delay the lawsuit. The city informed the court that they intend to seek a motion to dismiss after action by the City Council. Discovery continued during the next few months. On November 23, 2018, a motion was filed by the city of Chicago to dismiss the Protect Our Parks lawsuit. This request was denied on February 19, 2019 by Judge Blakey, allowing the lawsuit to proceed. On June 11, 2019, Judge Blakey ruled on the parties' cross-motions for summary judgment and granted judgment in favor of the City and against Protect our Parks, dismissing the lawsuit to block construction of the Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park. The case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court in August 2021, which denied the requested injunction against the City.


title: Barack Obama Presidential Center

text: Some University of Chicago faculty members signed a letter stating concerns about the design, raised questions about the estimated cost of transportation improvements, and stated that the plan is an "object-lesson in the mistakes of the past". A counter-letter in support of the Obama Center was signed by other faculty in response. The independent campus student newspaper, "The Chicago Maroon" wrote an editorial in support of the center that criticized the concerns raised by some faculty.


title: Barack Obama Presidential Center

text: Construction of the center was originally expected to begin in late 2018 and be completed in 2020 or 2021. A federal review of the project began in late 2017, responding to the local criticism and attempting to assess whether the project affects Jackson Park's status on the National Register of Historic Places. This review will likely determine the start date of construction if the plan is approved. Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects released the concept design for the center in 2017. The architects said in February 2017 that construction of the center's museum and library would likely approach $300 million, and that the center would likely need an endowment of $1.5 billion. In 2017, Obama reportedly was set to engage in a major fundraising effort for the center. On July 27, 2018, the Obama Foundation announced that groundbreaking for the center would be delayed until sometime in 2019, and the center would not open in 2021, as was initially planned.


title: Barack Obama Presidential Center

text: The foundation's 2017 annual report, and its 2017 IRS filing, show that the Obama Foundation raised $232.6 million, on expenses of $23 million. The year after Obama left office was the first year the foundation lifted a cap on donations. While it lists its donors on its website, it no longer specifically links donors to exact amounts. While the Chicago city government has not promised that the foundation's endowment details will be disclosed publicly, its agreement with the foundation requires that the foundation may not proceed with construction of the center until the building endowment is secured. On June 3, 2019, it was announced that a $5 million grant had been issued to the city of Chicago by the MacArthur Foundation for plans to build the new Chicago Public Library branch at the site of the proposed Obama Presidential Center. Construction began in August 2021. On September 28th, 2021, the Obamas, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker and Lightfoot participated in the groundbreaking ceremony.


title: Barack Obama Presidential Center

text: In November 2022, construction of the library was temporarily halted for several days, after a noose was found on site .


title: Barack Obama Presidential Center

text: The papers and artifacts from the Obama administration are being stored and processed inside a facility in suburban Hoffman Estates, northwest of Chicago's O'Hare International Airport. The records are to be digitized and stored in existing NARA facilities. By law, they are subject to Freedom of Information Act requests beginning in 2022.


title: Barack Obama Presidential Center

text: The federal government began a review of this project in 2017 because of Jackson Park's historic designation and potential changes to the roadways in and around the park. The review concluded four years later in 2021, and some design changes were made to project to meet objections raised in the review.


title: Barack Obama Presidential Center

text: In May 2018, the City of Chicago agreed to lease the land, 19.3 acres, to the OPC for 99 years. Once the construction is completed, the City of Chicago will own the center, per that 2018 city council agreement, reported in 2021 and also in 2018. The present mayor of Chicago has concerns for homeowners in the area, leading the City Council to agree to spend funds to keep people in their homes or aid them in buying other homes.


title: Barack Obama Presidential Center

text: Concerns about gentrification of the neighborhood around the OPC and Jackson Park led to an agreement in August 2020 regarding home improvement funds for homes in Woodlawn. "In July, city officials negotiated a deal that will require developers to include affordable housing for projects on city-owned property in Woodlawn. The agreement, worked out with residents and the local alderman, will also provide up to $20,000 in funding for home improvement work to some homeowners."


title: Barack Obama Presidential Center

text: Those who favor this project see it as a huge investment in the South Side, with the new public library branch, as well as the Obama Presidential Center itself, immediate benefits in jobs and when the project is completed it is expected to be a draw for tourists as well as an asset to the people in the neighborhood. They anticipate construction beginning in August 2021. Opponents appealed the plans, but lost in a federal court. They then appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, which in August 2021 refused to block the construction. Site construction began in August and a formal groundbreaking ceremony was held on September 28, 2021.


title: History of Athens

text: Athens is one of the oldest named cities in the world, having been continuously inhabited for perhaps 5,000 years. Situated in southern Europe, Athens became the leading city of Ancient Greece in the first millennium BC, and its cultural achievements during the 5th century BC laid the foundations of Western civilization.


title: History of Athens

text: During the early Middle Ages, the city experienced a decline, then recovered under the later Byzantine Empire and was relatively prosperous during the period of the Crusades (12th and 13th centuries), benefiting from Italian trade. Following a period of sharp decline under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, Athens in the 19th century as the capital of the independent and self-governing Greek state.


title: History of Athens

text: The name of Athens, connected to the name of its patron goddess Athena, originates from an earlier Pre-Greek language. The origin myth explaining how Athens acquired this name through the legendary contest between Poseidon and Athena was described by Herodotus, Apollodorus, Ovid, Plutarch, Pausanias and others. It even became the theme of the sculpture on the west pediment of the Parthenon. Both Athena and Poseidon requested to be patrons of the city and to give their name to it, so they competed with offering the city one gift each. Poseidon produced a spring by striking the ground with his trident, symbolizing naval power.


title: History of Athens

text: Athena created the olive tree, symbolizing peace and prosperity. The Athenians, under their ruler Cecrops, accepted the olive tree and named the city after Athena. (Later the Southern Italian city of Paestum was founded under the name of Poseidonia at about 600 BC.) A sacred olive tree said to be the one created by the goddess was still kept on the Acropolis at the time of Pausanias (2nd century AD). It was located by the temple of Pandrosus, next to the Parthenon. According to Herodotus, the tree had been burnt down during the Persian Wars, but a shoot sprung from the stump. The Greeks saw this as a symbol that Athena still had her mark there on the city.


title: History of Athens

text: Plato, in his dialogue "Cratylus", offers his own etymology of Athena's name connecting it to the phrase "ἁ θεονόα" or "hē theoû nóēsis" (ἡ θεοῦ νόησις, 'the mind of god').


title: History of Athens

text: There is evidence that the site on which the Acropolis ('high city') stands was first inhabited in the Neolithic period, perhaps as a defensible settlement, around the end of the fourth millennium BC or a little later. The site is a natural defensive position which commands the surrounding plains. It is located about inland from the Saronic Gulf, in the centre of the Cephisian Plain, a fertile valley surrounded by rivers. To the east lies Mount Hymettus, to the north Mount Pentelicus.


title: History of Athens

text: Ancient Athens, in the first millennium BC, occupied a very small area compared to the sprawling metropolis of modern Greece. The ancient walled city encompassed an area measuring about 2 km (1.25 mi) from east to west and slightly less than that from north to south, although at its peak the ancient city had suburbs extending well beyond these walls. The Acropolis was situated just south of the centre of this walled area.


title: History of Athens

text: The Agora, the commercial and social centre of the city, lay about 400 m (1,300 ft) north of the Acropolis, in what is now the Monastiraki district. The hill of the Pnyx, where the Athenian Assembly met, lay at the western end of the city. The Eridanus (Ηριδανός) river flowed through the city.


title: History of Athens

text: One of the most important religious sites in ancient Athens was the Temple of Athena, known today as the Parthenon, which stood on top of the Acropolis, where its evocative ruins still stand. Two other major religious sites, the Temple of Hephaestus (which is still largely intact) and the Temple of Olympian Zeus or Olympeion (once the largest temple in mainland Greece but now in ruins) also lay within the city walls.


title: History of Athens

text: Athens has been inhabited from Neolithic times, possibly from the end of the fourth millennium BC, or over 5,000 years. By 1412 BC, the settlement had become an important center of the Mycenaean civilization and the Acropolis was the site of a major Mycenaean fortress whose remains can be recognised from sections of the characteristic Cyclopean walls. On the summit of the Acropolis, below the later Erechtheion, cuttings in the rock have been identified as the location of a Mycenaean palace. Between 1250 and 1200 BC, to feed the needs of the Mycenaean settlement, a staircase was built down a cleft in the rock to reach a water supply that was protected from enemy incursions, comparable to similar works carried out at Mycenae.


title: History of Athens

text: Unlike other Mycenaean centers, such as Mycenae and Pylos, it is unclear whether Athens suffered destruction in about 1200 BC, an event traditionally attributed to a Dorian invasion (though now commonly attributed to a systems collapse, part of the Late Bronze Age collapse). The Athenians always maintained that they were 'pure' Ionians with no Dorian element. However, Athens, like many other Bronze Age settlements, went into economic decline for around 150 years following this.


title: History of Athens

text: Iron Age burials, in the Kerameikos and other locations, are often richly provided for and demonstrate that from 900 BC onwards Athens was one of the leading centres of trade and prosperity in the region; as were Lefkandi in Euboea and Knossos in Crete. This position may well have resulted from its central location in the Greek world, its secure stronghold on the Acropolis and its access to the sea, which gave it a natural advantage over inland rivals such as Thebes and Sparta.


title: History of Athens

text: According to legend, Athens was formerly ruled by kings, a situation which may have continued up until the 9th century BC. From later accounts, it is believed that these kings stood at the head of a land-owning aristocracy known as the "Eupatridae" (the 'well-born'), whose instrument of government was a Council which met on the Hill of Ares, called the Areopagus and appointed the chief city officials, the archons and the polemarch (commander-in-chief). The most famous king of Athens was Theseus, a prominent figure in Greek Mythology who killed the Minotaur.


title: History of Athens

text: During this period, Athens succeeded in bringing the other towns of Attica under its rule. This process of "synoikismos"the bringing together into one homecreated the largest and wealthiest state on the Greek mainland, but it also created a larger class of people excluded from political life by the nobility. By the 7th century BC, social unrest had become widespread, and the Areopagus appointed Draco to draft a strict new code of law (hence the word 'draconian'). When this failed, they appointed Solon, with a mandate to create a new constitution (in 594 BC).


title: History of Athens

text: The reforms that Solon initiated dealt with both political and economic issues. The economic power of the "Eupatridae" was reduced by forbidding the enslavement of Athenian citizens as a punishment for debt (debt bondage), by breaking up large landed estates and freeing up trade and commerce, which allowed the emergence of a prosperous urban trading class. Politically, Solon divided the Athenians into four classes, based on their wealth and their ability to perform military service. The poorest class, the "Thetai", (Ancient Greek "Θήται") who formed the majority of the population, received political rights for the first time and were able to vote in the "Ecclesia" (Assembly). But only the upper classes could hold political office. The Areopagus continued to exist but its powers were reduced.


title: History of Athens

text: The new system laid the foundations for what eventually became Athenian democracy, but in the short-term it failed to quell class conflict and after twenty years of unrest the popular party, led by Peisistratos, seized power. Peisistratos is usually called a tyrant, but the Greek word "tyrannos" does not mean a cruel and despotic ruler, merely one who took power by force. Peisistratos was in fact a very popular ruler, who made Athens wealthy, powerful, and a centre of culture. He preserved the Solonian Constitution, but made sure that he and his family held all the offices of state.


title: History of Athens

text: Peisistratus built the first aqueduct tunnel at Athens, which most likely had its sources on the slopes of Mount Hymettos and along the Ilissos river. It supplied, among other structures, the fountain house in the southeast corner of the Agora, but it had a number of branches. In the 4th century BC it was replaced by a system of terracotta pipes in a stone-built underground channel, sometimes called the Hymettos aqueduct; many sections had round, oval or square access holes on top of about .


title: History of Athens

text: Peisistratos died in 527 BC and was succeeded by his sons Hippias and Hipparchus. They proved to be much less adept rulers and in 514 BC, Hipparchus was assassinated in a private dispute over a young man (see Harmodius and Aristogeiton). This led Hippias to establish a real dictatorship, which proved very unpopular. He was overthrown in 510 BC. A radical politician with an aristocratic background named Cleisthenes then took charge, and it was he who established democracy in Athens.


title: History of Athens

text: The reforms of Cleisthenes replaced the traditional four "phyle" ('tribes') with ten new ones, named after legendary heroes and having no class basis; they were in fact electorates. Each "phyle" was in turn divided into three "trittyes" and each "trittys" had one or more demes, which became the basis of local government. The "phyle" each elected fifty members to the Boule, a council which governed Athens on a day-to-day basis. The Assembly was open to all citizens and was both a legislature and a supreme court, except in murder cases and religious matters, which became the only remaining functions of the Areopagus.


title: History of Athens

text: Most public offices were filled by lot, although the ten "strategoi" (generals) were elected. This system remained remarkably stable and, with a few brief interruptions, it remained in place for 170 years, until Philip II of Macedon defeated Athens and Thebes at the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC.


title: History of Athens

text: Prior to the rise of Athens, Sparta considered itself to be the leader (or hegemon) of the Greeks. In 499 BC, Athens sent troops to aid the Ionian Greeks of Asia Minor, who were rebelling against the Persian Empire (the Ionian Revolt). This provoked two Persian invasions of Greece by the Achaemenid Empire. In 490 BC, the Athenians, led by the soldier-statesman Miltiades, defeated the first invasion of the Persians under Darius I at the Battle of Marathon.


title: History of Athens

text: In 480 BC, the Persians returned under Darius's son Xerxes. When a small Greek force holding the pass of Thermopylae was defeated, the Persians proceeded to capture an evacuated Athens. The city of Athens was twice captured and sacked by the Persians within one year after Thermopylae. Subsequently, the Athenians (led by Themistocles), with their allies, engaged the much larger Persian navy at sea in the Battle of Salamis and routed the Persians, a great turning point in the war.


title: History of Athens

text: In 479 BC, the Athenians and Spartans, with their allies, defeated the Persian army conclusively at the Battle of Plataea. Athens then took the war to Asia Minor. These victories enabled it to bring most of the Aegean and many other parts of Greece together in the Delian League, an Athenian-dominated alliance.


title: History of Athens

text: The resentment felt by other cities at the hegemony of Athens led to the Peloponnesian War, which began in 431 BC and pitted Athens and its increasingly rebellious overseas empire against a coalition of land-based states led by Sparta. The conflict was a drawn out one that saw Sparta control the land while Athens was dominant at sea, however the disastrous Sicilian Expedition severely weakened Athens and the war eventually ended in an Athenian defeat following the Battle of Aegospotami which ended Athenian naval supremacy.


title: History of Athens

text: Due to its poor handling of the war, the democracy in Athens was briefly overthrown by a coup in 411 BC; however, it was quickly restored. The Peloponnesian War ended in 404 BC with the complete defeat of Athens. Since the loss of the war was largely blamed on democratic politicians such as Cleon and Cleophon, there was a brief reaction against democracy, aided by the Spartan army (the rule of the Thirty Tyrants). In 403 BC, however, democracy was restored by Thrasybulus and an amnesty was declared.


title: History of Athens

text: Sparta's former allies soon turned against her, due to her imperialist policy, and soon Athens' former enemies Thebes and Corinth had become her allies; they fought with Athens and Argos against Sparta in the indecisive Corinthian War (395 – 387 BC). Opposition to Sparta enabled Athens to establish a Second Athenian League.


title: History of Athens

text: Finally Thebes defeated Sparta in 371 BC in the Battle of Leuctra. But then the Greek cities (including Athens and Sparta) turned against Thebes, whose dominance was stopped at the Battle of Mantinea (362 BC) with the death of its military-genius leader Epaminondas.


title: History of Athens

text: By the mid-4th century BC, however, the northern Greek kingdom of Macedon was becoming dominant in Athenian affairs. In the Battle of Chaeronea (338 BC), Philip II's armies defeated an alliance of some of the Greek city-states including Athens and Thebes, forcing them into a confederation and effectively limiting Athenian independence. Philippides of Paiania, one of the wealthiest Athenian aristocratic oligarchs, campaigned for Philip II during the Battle of Chaeronea and proposed in the Assembly decrees honoring Alexander the Great for the Macedonian victory. Philippides was prosecuted in trial by Hypereides, who detested his pro-Macedonian sympathies. Subsequently, the conquests of Alexander the Great widened Greek horizons and made the traditional Greek city state obsolete. Athens remained a wealthy city with a brilliant cultural life, but ceased to be a leading power. The period following the death of Alexander in 323 BC is known as Hellenistic Greece.


title: History of Athens

text: The period from the end of the Persian Wars to the Macedonian conquest marked the zenith of Athens as a center of literature, philosophy, and the arts. In Athens at this time, the political satire of the Comic poets at the theatres had a remarkable influence on public opinion.


title: History of Athens

text: Some of the most important figures of Western cultural and intellectual history lived in Athens during this period: the dramatists Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes, the physician Hippocrates, the philosophers Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, the historians Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon, the poet Simonides, the orators Antiphon, Isocrates, Aeschines, and Demosthenes, and the sculptor Phidias. The leading statesman of the mid-fifth century BC was Pericles, who used the tribute paid by the members of the Delian League to build the Parthenon and other great monuments of classical Athens. The city became, in Pericles's words, "the school of Hellas [Greece]."


title: History of Athens

text: Shortly after the death of Alexander the Great, Antipater and Craterus became joint generals of Greece and Macedonia. Athens joined Aetolia and Thessaly in facing their power, known as the Lamian War. Craterus fell in a battle against Eumenes in 320 BC, leaving Antipater alone to rule for a year, till his death in 319 BC. Athens had a central role in the struggle for his succession, when Antipater's son, Cassander, secured the Piraeus leaving Athens without a source of supplies, to contest Antipeter's successor, Polyperchon. To consolidate power against Cassander, Polyperchon restored Athens's democracy, as it was before the Lamian War. However, after losing the fleet one year prior, Polyperchon had to flee Macedon when in 316 BC Cassander secured control of Athens. Cassander appointed Demetrius of Phalerum as head of the administration of Athens. Demetrius remained in power until 307 BC when Cassander's enemy, Demetrius Poliorcetes captured Athens, and Macedon, ending the short-lived Antipatrid dynasty and installing his own.


title: History of Athens

text: After the Pyrrhic War (280–275 BC) Rome asserted its hegemony over Magna Grecia and became increasingly involved in Greece and the Balkans peninsula. The First Macedonian War (214–205 BC) between the Roman Republic and the Kingdom of Macedon ended with the Treaty of Phoenice. During the Second Macedonian War (200–197), the Romans declared "the freedom of Greece" from the Macedonian Kings. After the Roman–Seleucid War (192–188), that ended with the Peace of Apamea, and the Third Macedonian War (171–168), after which Macedonian territory was divided into four client republics, Macedonia was formally annexed to the Roman Republic after the Fourth Macedonian War (150–148). After the Achaean League was itself defeated and dissolved by the Romans in the Achaean War in 146, during which the Battle of Corinth resulted in the looting and destruction of the city by Lucius Mummius Achaicus and Greece divided into the Roman provinces of Macedonia and Achaea. Athens thus came under Roman rule.


title: History of Athens

text: During the First Mithridatic War, Athens was ruled by a tyrant, Aristion, installed by Mithridates the Great. In 88–85 BC, most Athenian buildings, both houses and fortifications, were leveled by the Roman general Sulla (138 BC78 BC) after the Siege of Athens and Piraeus, although many civic buildings and monuments were left intact. Under Roman rule, Athens was given the status of a free city because of its widely admired schools. The Roman emperor Hadrian (), constructed the Library of Hadrian, a gymnasium, an aqueduct which is still in use, several temples and sanctuaries, a bridge, and finally completed the Temple of Olympian Zeus. The Arch of Hadrian commemorates the foundation of the city by Hadrian, with the "city of Theseus" referred to on its inscription on one side of the arch, and the new quarter erected by Hadrian around the Temple of Zeus called the "city of Hadrian".


title: History of Athens

text: The city was sacked by the Heruli in 267 AD, resulting in the burning of all the public buildings, the plundering of the lower city and the damaging of the Agora and Acropolis. After the Sack of Athens, the city to the north of the Acropolis was hastily refortified on a smaller scale, with the agora left outside the walls. Athens remained a centre of learning and philosophy during its 500 years of Roman rule, patronized by emperors such as Nero and Hadrian.


title: History of Athens

text: In the early 4th century AD, the eastern Roman empire began to be governed from Constantinople, and with the construction and expansion of the imperial city, many of Athens's works of art were taken by the emperors to adorn it. The Empire became Christianized, and the use of Latin declined in favour of exclusive use of Greek; in the Roman imperial period, both languages had been used. In the later Roman period, Athens was ruled by the emperors continuing until the 13th century, its citizens identifying themselves as citizens of the Roman Empire (""Rhomaioi""). The conversion of the empire from paganism to Christianity greatly affected Athens, resulting in reduced reverence for the city. Ancient monuments such as the Parthenon, Erechtheion and the Hephaisteion (Theseion) were converted into churches. As the empire became increasingly anti-pagan, Athens became a provincial town and experienced fluctuating fortunes.


title: History of Athens

text: The city remained an important center of learning, especially of Neoplatonism—with notable pupils including Gregory of Nazianzus, Basil of Caesarea and emperor Julian ()—and consequently a center of paganism. Christian items do not appear in the archaeological record until the early 5th century. The sack of the city by the Herules in 267 and by the Visigoths under their king Alaric I () in 396, however, dealt a heavy blow to the city's fabric and fortunes, and Athens was henceforth confined to a small fortified area that embraced a fraction of the ancient city. The emperor Justinian I () banned the teaching of philosophy by pagans in 529, an event whose impact on the city is much debated, but is generally taken to mark the end of the ancient history of Athens. Athens was sacked by the Slavs in 582, but remained in imperial hands thereafter, as highlighted by the visit of the emperor Constans II () in 662/3 and its inclusion in the Theme of Hellas.


title: History of Athens

text: The city was threatened by Saracen raids in the 8th–9th centuries—in 896, Athens was raided and possibly occupied for a short period, an event which left some archaeological remains and elements of Arabic ornamentation in contemporary buildings—but there is also evidence of a mosque existing in the city at the time. In the great dispute over Byzantine Iconoclasm, Athens is commonly held to have supported the iconophile position, chiefly due to the role played by Empress Irene of Athens in the ending of the first period of Iconoclasm at the Second Council of Nicaea in 787. A few years later, another Athenian, Theophano, became empress as the wife of Staurakios (r. 811–812).


title: History of Athens

text: Invasion of the empire by the Turks after the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, and the ensuing civil wars, largely passed the region by and Athens continued its provincial existence unharmed. When the Byzantine Empire was rescued by the resolute leadership of the three Komnenos emperors Alexios, John and Manuel, Attica and the rest of Greece prospered. Archaeological evidence tells us that the medieval town experienced a period of rapid and sustained growth, starting in the 11th century and continuing until the end of the 12th century.


title: History of Athens

text: The agora or marketplace, which had been deserted since late antiquity, began to be built over, and soon the town became an important centre for the production of soaps and dyes. The growth of the town attracted the Venetians, and various other traders who frequented the ports of the Aegean, to Athens. This interest in trade appears to have further increased the economic prosperity of the town.


title: History of Athens

text: The 11th and 12th centuries were the Golden Age of Byzantine art in Athens. Almost all of the most important Middle Byzantine churches in and around Athens were built during these two centuries, and this reflects the growth of the town in general. However, this medieval prosperity was not to last. In 1204, the Fourth Crusade conquered Athens and the city was not recovered from the Latins before it was taken by the Ottoman Turks. It did not become Greek in government again until the 19th century.


title: History of Athens

text: From 1204 until 1458, Athens was ruled by Latins in three separate periods, following the Crusades. The "Latins", or "Franks", were western Europeans and followers of the Latin Church brought to the Eastern Mediterranean during the Crusades. Along with rest of Byzantine Greece, Athens was part of the series of feudal fiefs, similar to the Crusader states established in Syria and on Cyprus after the First Crusade. This period is known as the "Frankokratia".


title: History of Athens

text: Athens was initially the capital of the eponymous Duchy of Athens, a fief of the Latin Empire which replaced the Byzantine Empire, ruling from Constantinople. After Thebes became a possession of the Latin dukes, which were of the Burgundian family called De la Roche, it replaced Athens as the capital and seat of government, although Athens remained the most influential ecclesiastical centre in the duchy and site of a prime fortress.


title: History of Athens

text: Under the Burgundian dukes, a bell tower was added to the Parthenon, known as the Frankish Tower. The Burgundians brought chivalry and tournaments to Athens; they also fortified the Acropolis. They were themselves influenced by Byzantine Greek culture.


title: History of Athens

text: In 1311, Athens was conquered by the Catalan Company, a band of mercenaries called "Almogavars". It was held by the Catalans until 1388. After 1379, when Thebes was lost, Athens became the capital of the duchy again.


title: History of Athens

text: The history of Aragonese Athens, called "Cetines" (rarely "Athenes") by the conquerors, is obscure. Athens was a "veguería" with its own castellan, captain, and "veguer". At some point during the Aragonese period, the Acropolis was further fortified and the Athenian archdiocese received an extra two suffragan sees.


title: History of Athens

text: In 1388, the Florentine Nerio I Acciajuoli took the city and made himself duke. The Florentines had to dispute the city with the Republic of Venice, but they ultimately emerged victorious after seven years of Venetian rule (1395–1402). The descendants of Nerio I Acciajuoli ruled the city (as their capital) until the Turkish conquest of 1458.


title: History of Athens

text: The first Ottoman attack on Athens, which involved a short-lived occupation of the town, came in 1397, under the Ottoman generals Yaqub Pasha and Timurtash. Finally, in 1458, Athens was captured by the Ottomans under the personal leadership of Sultan Mehmed II. As the Ottoman Sultan rode into the city, he was greatly struck by the beauty of its ancient monuments and issued a "firman" (imperial edict) forbidding their looting or destruction, on pain of death. The Parthenon was converted into Athens' main mosque.


title: History of Athens

text: Under Ottoman rule, the city was denuded of any importance and its population severely declined, leaving Athens as a "small country town" (Franz Babinger). From the early 17th century, Athens came under the jurisdiction of the Kizlar Agha, the chief black eunuch of the Sultans' harem. The city had originally been granted by Sultan Ahmed I () to Basilica, one of his favourite concubines, who hailed from the city, in response of complaints of maladministration by the local governors. After her death, Athens came under the purview of the Kizlar Agha.


title: History of Athens

text: The Turks began a practice of storing gunpowder and explosives in the Parthenon and Propylaea. In 1640, a lightning bolt struck the Propylaea, causing its destruction. In 1687, during the Morean War, the Acropolis was besieged by the Venetians under Francesco Morosini, and the temple of Athena Nike was dismantled by the Ottomans to fortify the Parthenon. A shot fired during the bombardment of the Acropolis caused a powder magazine in the Parthenon to explode (26 September), and the building was severely damaged, giving it the appearance we see today. The occupation of the Acropolis continued for six months and both the Venetians and the Ottomans participated in the looting of the Parthenon. One of its western pediments was removed, causing even more damage to the structure. The Venetians occupied the town, converting its two mosques into Catholic and Protestant churches, but on 9 April 1688 they abandoned it again to the Ottomans.


title: History of Athens

text: In the 18th century, however, the city recovered much of its prosperity. During Michel Fourmont's visit in the city in the 1720s, he witnessed much construction going on, and by the time the Athenian teacher Ioannis Benizelos wrote an account of the city's affairs in the 1770s, Athens was once again enjoying some prosperity, so that, according to Benizelos, it "could be cited as an example to the other cities of Greece". Its Greek population possessed a considerable degree of self-government, under a council of primates composed of the leading aristocratic families, along with the city's metropolitan bishop. The community was quite influential with the Ottoman authorities, the "pasha" (governor), the "kadi" (judge), the "mufti", and the garrison commander of the Acropolis—according to Benizelos, if the "pasha" did not treat them well and heed their opinion, he was liable to be removed before his annual term of office was out—particularly through the influence at Constantinople of the two Athenian-born patriarchs of Jerusalem, Parthenius (1737–1766) and Ephram II (1766–1770). Taxation was also light, with only the "kharaj" tax payable to the Ottoman government, as well as the salt tax and a water-tax for the olive yards and gardens.


title: History of Athens

text: This peaceful situation was interrupted in 1752–1753, when the execution of the previous Kizlar Agha resulted in the dispatch of a new "pasha", Sari Muselimi. His abuse of power led to protests by both the Greeks and the Turks; Sari Muselimi killed some of the notables who protested, whereupon the populace burned down his residence. Sari Muselimi fled to the Acropolis where he was besieged by the Athenians, until the Ottoman governor of Negroponte intervened and restored order, imprisoning the Metropolitan and imposing a heavy fine on the Greek community. In 1759 the new "pasha", a native Muslim, destroyed one of the pillars of the Temple of Olympian Zeus to provide material for a fifth mosque for the city—an illegal act, as the temple was considered the Sultan's property. In the next year, Athens was removed from the purview of the Kizlar Agha and transferred to the privy purse of the Sultan. Henceforth it would be leased as a "malikhane", a form of tax farming where the owner bought the proceeds of the city for a fixed sum, and enjoyed them for life.


title: History of Athens

text: The first owner ("malikhane sahib"), Ismail Agha, a local Turk from Livadeia, had been humane and popular, appointing good "voevodas", so that he was nicknamed "the Good". English visitors during the 1760s report a population of around 10,000 inhabitants, around four-fifths of which were Christians. The Turkish community numbered several families established in the city since the Ottoman conquest; and their relations with their Christian neighbours were friendlier than elsewhere, as they had assimilated themselves to a degree, even to the point of drinking wine. The climate was healthy, but the city relied chiefly on pasture—practiced by the Arvanites of Attica—rather than agriculture. It exported leather, soap, grain, oil, honey, wax, resin, a little silk, cheese, and valonia, chiefly to Constantinople and France. The city hosted a French and an English consul. During the Orlov Revolt the Athenians, with the exception of the younger ones, remained cautious and passive, even when the Greek chieftain Mitromaras seized Salamis. Nevertheless, it was only thanks to the intervention of Ismail Agha that the city was spared a massacre as reprisals, and was forced to pay an indemnity instead.


title: History of Athens

text: Ismail Agha's successor, Hadji Ali Haseki was cruel and tyrannical, and the twenty years of his on-and-off rule over the city, represented one of the worst periods in the city's history. Supported by the city's aristocratic families, and his relationship with the Sultan's sister, who was his lover, he extorted large sums from the populace, and seized much property from them. Through protests in Constantinople, the Athenians achieved his recall several times, but Haseki always returned until his final downfall and execution in 1795. His early tenure also saw two large Albanian raids into Attica, as a response to which he ordered the construction of a new city wall, the "Wall of Haseki", which was partly constructed with material taken from ancient monuments. Between 1801 and 1805 Lord Elgin, the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, arranged for the removal of many sculptures from the Parthenon (the Elgin marbles). Along with the Panathenaic frieze, one of the six caryatids of the Erechtheion was extracted and replaced with a plaster mold. All in all, fifty pieces of sculpture were carried away, including three fragments purchased by the French.


title: History of Athens

text: Athens produced some notable intellectuals during this era, such as Demetrius Chalcondyles (1424–1511), who became a celebrated Renaissance teacher of Greek and of Platonic philosophy in Italy. Chalcondyles published the first printed editions of Homer (in 1488), of Isocrates (in 1493), and of the Suda lexicon (in 1499), and a Greek grammar (Erotemata).


title: History of Athens

text: His cousin Laonicus Chalcondyles (c. 1423–1490) was also a native of Athens, a notable scholar and Byzantine historian and one of the most valuable of the later Greek historians. He was the author of the valuable work "Historiarum Demonstrationes" (Demonstrations of History) and was a great admirer of the ancient writer Herodotus, encouraging the interest of contemporary Italian humanists in that ancient historian. In the 17th century, Athenian-born Leonardos Philaras (c. 1595–1673), was a Greek scholar, politician, diplomat, advisor and the Duke of Parma's ambassador to the French court, spending much of his career trying to persuade western European intellectuals to support Greek independence.


title: History of Athens

text: In 1822, a Greek insurgency captured the city, but it fell to the Ottomans again in 1826 (though Acropolis held till June 1827). Again the ancient monuments suffered badly. The Ottoman forces remained in possession until March 1833, when they withdrew. At that time, the city (as throughout the Ottoman period) had a small population of an estimated 400 houses, mostly located around the Acropolis in the Plaka.


title: History of Athens

text: In 1832, Otto, Prince of Bavaria, was proclaimed King of Greece. He adopted the Greek spelling of his name, King Othon, as well as Greek national dress, and made it one of his first tasks as king to conduct a detailed archaeological and topographical survey of Athens, his new capital. He assigned Gustav Eduard Schaubert and Stamatios Kleanthis to complete this task. At that time, Athens had a population of only 4,000 to 5,000 people in a scattering of houses at the foot of the Acropolis, located in what today covers the district of Plaka.


title: History of Athens

text: Athens was chosen as the Greek capital for historical and sentimental reasons. There are few buildings dating from the period of the Byzantine Empire or the 18th century. Once the capital was established, a modern city plan was laid out and public buildings were erected.


title: History of Athens

text: The finest legacy of this period are the buildings of the University of Athens (1837), the National Gardens of Athens (1840), the National Library of Greece (1842), the Old Royal Palace (now the Greek Parliament Building; 1843), the Old Parliament Building (1858), the City Hall (1874), the Zappeion Exhibition Hall (1878), the Greek National Academy (1885) and the New Royal Palace (now the Presidential Palace; 1897). In 1896 the city hosted the 1896 Summer Olympics.


title: History of Athens

text: Athens experienced its second period of explosive growth following the disastrous Greco-Turkish War in 1921, when more than a million Greek refugees from Asia Minor were resettled in Greece, after the Asia Minor Catastrophe in 1922. Suburbs such as Nea Ionia and Nea Smyrni began as refugee settlements on the Athens outskirts and the population of the city doubled.


title: History of Athens

text: Athens was occupied by the Axis (primarily German soldiers) during World War II and experienced terrible privations during the later years of the war. The Great Famine greatly affected the city during the occupation. Several resistance organizations were present inside Athens to fight against the occupation. Following the liberation of Greece and the ensuing Greek Civil War, the Dekemvriana rocked the city with heavy fighting between communist forces and government forces backed by the British.


title: History of Athens

text: Following World War II the city began to grow again as people migrated from the villages and islands to find work. Greek entry into the European Union in 1981 brought a flood of new investment to the city, but also increasing social and environmental problems. Athens had some of the worst traffic congestion and air pollution in the world at that time. This posed a new threat to the ancient monuments of Athens, as traffic vibration weakened foundations and air pollution corroded marble. The city's environmental and infrastructure problems were the main reason why Athens failed to secure the 1996 Centenary Olympic Games. Following the failed attempt to secure the 1996 Olympics, both the city of Athens and the Greek government, aided by European Union funds, undertook major infrastructure projects such as the new Athens Airport and a new metro system. The city also tackled air pollution by restricting the use of cars in the center of the city. As a result, Athens won its bid to host the 2004 Summer Olympic Games. Despite the skepticism of many observers, the games were a success and brought renewed prestige and tourism revenue to Athens. The 2008 Greek Riots began in Athens following the killing of a 15-year old student by an officer.


title: Microchip Technology

text: Microchip Technology Inc. is a publicly-listed American corporation that manufactures microcontroller, mixed-signal, analog and Flash-IP integrated circuits. Its products include microcontrollers (PIC, dsPIC, AVR and SAM), Serial EEPROM devices, Serial SRAM devices, embedded security devices, radio frequency (RF) devices, thermal, power and battery management analog devices, as well as linear, interface and wireless products.


title: Microchip Technology

text: Its corporate headquarters is located in Chandler, Arizona. Its wafer fabs are located in Tempe, Arizona, Gresham, Oregon, and Colorado Springs, Colorado. Its assembly/test facilities are in Chachoengsao, Thailand, and Calamba and Cabuyao, Philippines. Sales for the fiscal year ending on March 31, 2019 were $5.35 billion.


title: Microchip Technology

text: Microchip Technology offers support and resources to educators, researchers and students in an effort to increase awareness and knowledge of embedded applications. Support includes access to labs, curricula and course materials, one-on-one consultations, online resources (e.g., code examples, textbook recommendations), training at regional training centers, silicon donations, assistance finding low cost development tools, free versions of Microchip programming tools and product discounts.


title: Microchip Technology

text: Microchip Technology was founded in 1987 when General Instrument spun off its microelectronics division as a wholly owned subsidiary.


title: Microchip Technology

text: The newly formed company was a supplier of programmable non-volatile memory, microcontrollers, digital signal processors, card chip on board, and consumer integrated circuits.


title: Microchip Technology

text: An initial public offering later in the year was canceled because of the October 1987 stock market crash.


title: Microchip Technology

text: Microchip Technology became an independent company in 1989 when it was acquired by a group of venture capitalists led by Sequoia Capital.


title: Microchip Technology

text: In the same year, Microchip Technology announced the release of small, inexpensive 8-bit reduced instruction set computing (RISC) microcontrollers for $2.40 apiece whereas most RISC microcontrollers were 32-bit devices selling for hundreds of dollars.


title: Microchip Technology

text: In 1990, 60% of Microchip Technology's sales were from the disc drive industry and the product portfolio relied heavily on commodity EEPROM products.


title: Microchip Technology

text: The company was losing $2.5 million per quarter, had less than 6 months of cash in reserve, had exhausted lines of credit, and was failing to control expenses.


title: Microchip Technology

text: Early in the year, the venture capital investors accepted an offer to sell Microchip Technology to Winbond Electronics Corporation of Taiwan for $15 million. Winbond Electronics backed out of the deal after the Taiwanese stock market decrease in May 1990. Vice President of Operations, Steve Sanghi, was named president and chief operating officer of Microchip Technology in 1990.


title: Microchip Technology

text: After several quarters of losses, Sanghi oversaw Microchip Technology's transition from selling commodity-based products to specialized chips, such as the RISC technology.


title: Microchip Technology

text: Microchip Technology conducted an IPO in 1993, which Fortune magazine cited as the best performing IPO of the year with a stock appreciation of 500% and over $1 billion in market capitalization.


title: Microchip Technology

text: In-line with the general consolidation of the semiconductor industry, Microchip Technology purchased 17 semiconductor manufacturers from 2007 through 2017.


title: Microchip Technology

text: Microchip Technology offers 8-bit microcontrollers, 16-bit PIC microcontrollers, dsPIC digital signal controllers, 3analog and interface products, security authentication products, timing/communication/real-time clock and calendar products, real-time clock and calendar devices, memory products, wireless products, high-throughput USB and Ethernet interfaces, MOST technology, embedded controllers and super I/O devices, touch, multi-touch and 3D gesture control products, power over Ethernet systems and ICs, and field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs).


title: Microchip Technology

text: Microchip Technology's 8-bit portfolio consists of over 1,200 devices constructed under two architectures: PIC microcontrollers or AVR microcontrollers. Key features of the 8-bit microcontrollers are Core Independent Peripherals, low-power performance with picoPower and eXtreme Low Power (XLP) technology and EMI/EMC performance.


title: Microchip Technology

text: The 16-bit microcontrollers, such as the PIC24, offer an upgrade over the 8-bit devices in features and peripherals (e.g., more memory, additional pins). The 16-bit microcontrollers are constructed under the PIC microcontroller architecture.


title: Microchip Technology

text: Microchip Technology's 32-bit product portfolio run at up to 600 DMIPs with up to 2048 KB Flash and 512 KB RAM with 32 MB integrated DDR2 dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) or 128 MB externally addressable options. The 32-bit portfolio addresses advanced graphics and Internet of things (IoT) applications.


title: Microchip Technology

text: The 32-bit Arm microprocessors were designed for applications beyond the 32-bit microcontrollers with 600MHz (942 DMIPS) operation, support for up to 512 MD of external DDR2 or DDR3 DRAM and power down to 0.3mW sleep. Available peripherals and users interfaces include gigabit Ethernet MAC addresses, USBs, hardware video decoding, capacitive sensing, 12-bit CMOS sensors, I²S audio interfaces and 24-bit graphic LCD controllers with overlays.