Drawing Lines in the Sand: Observations from an Athens Shore Where a Public and Private Beach Coexist

Every summer along the Mediterranean coast, a familiar conflict plays out over who gets to occupy the shores. In Italy, for instance, access to beaches is legally a common right, with guaranteed public access. In practice, however, private operators have increasingly taken over stretches of coastline, charging steep fees for entry and services. This summer, rising prices have started pushing more and more people who can’t afford them elsewhere (The Guardian).

In this month’s Lapilli+, we take you to a small beach in Greece where the contrast between the private and public beach couldn’t be more stark. Vasiliki Poula and Carolina Rota, two Oxford University researchers who study how spatial arrangements shape identities and urban communities, wrote a commentary based on a recent visit to what Poula always referred to as “Grandpa’s beach.” Today that stretch of coastline has been split in two: half private beach with hefty fees to laze on sunbeds and in cabanas, and half public beach for everyone else. This dual setting prompted the authors to reflect on a broader trend across the Mediterranean: beaches increasingly losing their role as social equalizers and instead amplifying inequalities.

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It’s a scorching morning in early July in Athens. We — Vasiliki and Carolina — are stealing a few days away from our doctoral degrees in the U.K., slipping out of fieldwork and the library and into the idleness of the Greek summer. Vasiliki, who grew up in Athens, is back home for a visit, and Carolina has come along for a brief vacation. We are driving along the coastal road with both the air conditioning on and the windows cracked open, trying to outwit the heat. We are desperately looking for a spot to take a quick swim and turn into a small cove that Vasiliki has always called “Grandpa’s beach,” never quite sure if it has ever had an official name. Carolina has already gone on the must-see tour of the city and by now, she’s eager for the locals’ perspective. After all, both of us study the lived experience of cities — how spatial arrangements shape identities and communities — and it turns out this way of seeing is hard to leave behind, even on vacation.

The sea soon becomes visible in the distance, just beyond a wide asphalt stretch that seems to serve as an improvised parking lot. The beach remains undecipherable; we cannot yet tell what kind of place it is, who it’s for. A man stands just before the sand begins, under a scrap of shade. We hesitate at the sight of a “Do not park here” sign. We put the brakes on, roll down the window. “We will just stay for a quick dip,” we say. He smiles and nods, waving us in with a gesture that is both permissive and ambiguous. Somewhere along the way, access to the beach — in the so-called “Athens Riviera” and beyond — quickly stopped feeling like a common right and more like a favor.

From where the two of us stand, facing the sea, the beach breaks in two: The right side is privately managed, while the left unfolds unclaimed. This division was not always the case, Vasiliki recalls. It was in 2019 that the local municipality of Vari-Voula-Vouliagmeni, part of Athens’ southern suburbs, granted a permit to a private company to operate what was designated as an organized beach for the first time. This included sunbeds, umbrellas and restaurant service. The contract, in theory, was clear: The private operator could occupy up to 50 percent of the beach, with the other half remaining open and free for public use. But no detailed map accompanied the agreement with guidelines on where tables, umbrellas and loungers could be placed in relation to the shoreline.

This is not just a local story in Athens. All across the Mediterranean and beyond, coastlines are increasingly being redrawn, not with fences or formal decrees, but through a more subtle choreography of signs, fees, permissions and absences. In Italy, for example, 43 percent of the beaches are managed privately, with some regions like Liguria seeing 70 percent of its shores under private operators’ control. In Lebanon, up to an estimated 80 percent of its approximately 220 -kilometer (137-mile) coastline is privatized.