France and Greece's first ladies tour the Acropolis

Greece's first lady Betty Baziana took her French counterpart Brigitte Trogneux to the Acropolis for a cultural tour, as the French President Emmanuel Macron praised Greece  during a speech at Pnyx in Athens.

During the French President's visit to Athens, Baziana has scheduled a rich itinerary for France's first lady, which will include tours demonstrating aspects of both ancient and modern Greece.

Visiting the Athens Acropolis is the obligatory first stop of any tour of the Greek capital as this is the iconic world heritage monument that symbolises the dawn of western culture and sums up the spirit of ancient Greece and ancient Greek thought.

Other stops for the first ladies will include The Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Centre, an emblematic new building erected by architect Renzo Piano to house the Greek national opera and national library, which will serve as representative of the "modern face" of the country, which still converses with its ancient past and Attica's landmarks, the Acropolis, Lycabettus Hill and the sea.

At the SNFCC, the two first ladies will explore aspects of modern Greek culture that are currently unfolding in the arts, letters and the sciences.

Meanwhile, Macron made a 50-minute “New Europe” speech, starting in Greek and highlighting ancient democratic values born in Greece and the need for a more open, more democratic, more inclusive European Union.

Macron spoke of a six-month pan-European debate he will be proposing in early 2018, in order for citizens to express their hopes and dreams for a different EU, based on the peoples’ wills and aspirations.

Macron has praised Greece and said after the reforms and huge efforts of the Greek people, Europe must talk about an exit from the crisis, in a brief dialogue with Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras before the press.

Macron said that, for him, Greece “is something very important.”