A campaign by the City of Athens to beautify the capital continued on Sunday with a cleanup of two of the city’s most popular squares: Exarchia and Kolonaki.

Following similar cleanups in recent weeks in Metaxourgeio, Votanikos and Petralona, crews from the municipality’s sanitation department got to work on the two central squares, washing down roads and purging the surrounding streets of trash.

The cleaning campaigns have been carried out on Sundays as heavy traffic make the roads virtually inaccessible on weekdays.

Athens Mayor Kostas Bakoyannis said the initiative would become a tradition on Sundays in Athens. “What is changing in the capital is [people’s] understanding of the need for daily life to be civilized,” he said. 

The municipal teams will continue their work, he said, stressing that the initiative was City Hall’s way of ensuring “the citizens’ right to enjoy their city, clean.”

This article was originally published at ekathimerini.com.