100 Euros The Academy

Issued to commemorate the centenary of the Athens Academy's main building completion, this coin belongs to a broader Greek cultural series timed to coincide with the 2004 Athens Olympics — a moment the Greek government used aggressively to reframe Athens as both an ancient and modern intellectual capital. The Academy building itself, designed by Theophil Hansen and funded largely by Simon Sinas, took decades longer to finish than originally planned, its construction stretching from the 1860s into the early twentieth century.