Graffiti is Terrible! But Street Art is Great! (Or Maybe It's More Complicated Than That?)

How living in a neighborhood in Athens gave me a new perspective.

I have always hated graffiti.

Back when Brent and I lived in Seattle, we had a nice house with a cedar fence. One morning, we woke up to find the fence defaced with an incoherent spray-painted scrawl.

I was pissed. You had to be a real asshole to do that to someone else’s property.

On the other hand, I’ve always loved street art.

Brent and I became digital nomads nine years ago, and whenever we travel across Europe, I hate all the graffiti we see — on historic buildings in Lisbon, on statues in Naples, and on trains in Barcelona.

How could people ruin such beautiful things? Or intrude on spaces that belong to everyone?

Then, three years ago, we spent a month in the Exarcheia neighborhood of Athens — easily the most graffiti-covered place I have ever seen.

I mean, it’s insane.

Almost every surface was hit: doorways, shutters, shop signs — even some of the neighborhood’s gorgeous street art.

Really?

What’s the difference between graffiti and street art? Why do I like one but not the other?

Graffiti is all about ostentatious tags and garishly spray-painted messages on public and private property. It’s done quickly, mostly without permission, and is often illegal.

If you want to be poetic about it, think of it as the raw voice of the streets.

​Street art, meanwhile, turns city walls into giant canvases — but with permission. It’s usually more about sharing beauty or ideas with the public, so even folks who aren’t into graffiti can end up loving street art on a neighborhood stroll.

A pretty typical scene in Exarcheia.

Because we stayed a whole month, Exarcheia’s graffiti became part of my daily life.

And it was so ubiquitous and insanely colorful — as if a cargo plane filled with spray paint had exploded over the neighborhood — that I couldn’t resist taking hundreds of photos.

As photogenic as it was, something in me still bristled. It felt wrong — too much, too messy, especially when someone scribbled over an actual piece of art.

But I also grew increasingly curious. Why was graffiti here so out of control? Why did the people who lived here tolerate it? And where were the police?

It turned out the neighborhood dates back to the 1870s, when Athens was rapidly urbanizing. Exarcheia was already home to two universities, which attracted students, intellectuals, and progressive thinkers.

By the early 20th century, Exarcheia had taken on a bohemian vibe — the sort of place where people didn’t necessarily follow all the rules or conventions of society, and weren’t shy about speaking out about pretty much everything.

During the Axis Occupation of Greece in WWII, the neighborhood was filled with Nazi resistors staging protests against their German occupiers. That was when slogans and political writings first began appearing on the walls of Exarcheia.

Things escalated dramatically after a military junta took over Greece in 1967. Students at Athens Polytechnic had been protesting for years, but in 1973 they launched an uprising that sparked a series of political crises and ultimately helped topple the government.

That moment cemented Exarcheia’s identity as a place where resisting authority wasn’t just common — it was the culture.

By the 1990s, graffiti became more widespread as residents used free expression to criticize capitalism, government corruption, homophobia, sexual violence, and more.

But it didn’t reach today’s levels until 2008, when police shot and killed fifteen-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos.

His death set off a wave of protests — not just against the killing, but against how the young and the poor were suffering during Greece’s economic crisis.

This mural commemorates a 27-year-old activist killed by police in 2020.

Learning this history changed how I felt.

What I had dismissed as vandalism had deeper roots — and more meaning — than I’d imagined.

Then I asked a question I should have asked from the start: What did the residents of Exarcheia think? And how did Greeks in general feel about graffiti, because it appeared all throughout the city, even if nothing matched Exarcheia’s intensity.

A local told me, “If you choose to live in this neighborhood, you know what it’s all about. This is part of why you live here.”

That made sense. Rebelliousness and graffiti grew up here together; complaining about it would be like moving next to an airport and then griping about the planes.

But outside of Exarcheia, people aren’t quite so understanding. Both city and federal governments have launched campaigns to “clean up” the area, which, it must be said, has a gritty, rundown feel.

Abandoned buildings have been taken over by migrants — or squatters, depending on your point of view. Crime happens in some of its shadowier corners.

It is not a “pretty” place.

Many residents see the cleanup attempts as something more nefarious: a political effort to stifle critical voices.

It’s not for me to say who’s right.

But living in the area challenged me. Where I saw only graffiti and someone’s personal property being violated, others saw something of value.

“Greeks don’t think the way you do,” a local friend told me. “We push back against authority. We value speaking out. So a lot of people feel the outsides of the buildings belong to everyone.”

As a former homeowner and a middle-class American, that idea was a lot to absorb.

Nine years of travel have upended many of my old assumptions about the world.

The world has turned out to be even more complicated than I thought. I’ve even changed my mind about graffiti — at least in part.

I still don’t like graffiti, and in most places, I don’t like seeing it.

But it also depends on context.

I’m grateful that places like Exarcheia exist: places that force us to rethink what we believe — to look at things we might otherwise overlook.

And looking more closely at the world is something the world needs more of.

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Michael Jensen is a travel writer, amateur photographer, and novelist. Check out his other newsletter about his travels at BrentAndMichaelAreGoingPlaces.com.