If Athens mayor Dora Bakoyiannis gets her way, travel guidebooks on the 2004 Olympic Games host city will soon need some major revision.

In her scenario, the world's biggest sporting event will leave the Greek capital not just with new stadiums, better roads, upgraded public transport and restored landmarks but also with a new image as a world-class city.

"The day after the Games Athens will be much more beautiful, much cleaner and we will have also changed the image of the city in the world," Bakoyiannis told Reuters.

Much has already changed since Athens won the Olympic bid in 1997, including the completion of extra metro lines and a spacious new airport.

But many guides to Athens still come with a health warning about the city's pollution, overcrowding, uncontrolled growth and traffic chaos. The "new Athens" remains a work in progress.

The benefits of the Games are less than obvious to four million Athenians who wake up to the sound of jackhammers and spend hours in traffic as a frantic race to make up for months of delays has turned the city into a vast building site.

But Bakoyiannis, who won local elections on promises of a cleaner, greener, friendlier capital, says once the work is over everyone will be able to appreciate the improvement.

If all goes as planned, post-games Athens will have 120 km of new roads, a network of underground parking, a suburban rail linking the airport with the city centre and a tram connecting the centre with seaside suburbs.

LANDMARK DOME

Spruced up parks, playgrounds and facades of historic buildings and a fleet of new garbage trucks are also part of the massive makeover that the city plans in a 433-million-euro, four-year investment programme.

There are also plans to make Athens more accessible to people with disabilities ahead of the biggest ever paralympics.

The city will have a new landmark -- a steel and glass dome designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava which will cover the main Olympic stadium. There were plans to scrap it to save time and money but the organisers are now confident it will be ready.

Among 21 sports venues being upgraded or built from scratch, some, such as the Athens Olympic Sports Centre and a complex on the site of the old airport, will provide the city with much-needed conference, exhibition and concert facilities.

Other Olympic venues in Thessaloniki, Patras and Heraklion will get a slice of the pie and organisers hope that the whole country will gain from a rise in tourism and a heightened international profile.

Athens officials hope the Games will help the city to shed its image of an uninviting sprawl with ancient treasures obscured by concrete and smog.

Bakoyannis's dream is to create a city where visitors will be spoilt for choice.

"I would have a very big problem to try and put together a programme of three or four days for a friend because I would not know what to choose," Bakoyiannis says of the future.

Seizing the opportunity that blanket two-week television coverage will offer is key to steering clear of an economic slump once the building boom is over and European Union and public funds start flowing elsewhere.

BUSINESS CENTRE

"This promotion is very big capital for the city because it should wake up the interest of a lot of people around the world not just in visiting us but also in taking part in the economic development of the city," Bakoyiannis said.

City officials believe improvements to infrastructure will make their efforts to woo foreign business more convincing.

A post-Games campaign will promote Athens as a tourist and cultural attraction as well as a key business centre for the southern Mediterranean and a springboard for expansion in the Balkans.

But there is a lot of work still to do.

It was only last month that the city got round to setting up a visitor and convention bureau. Internet resources are limited and there is more English-language information on the web about Athens, Georgia, than the Greek capital.

Athens 2004 organisers insist the Games' legacy goes beyond tangible improvements in infrastructure and increased business.

Games chief Gianna Angelopoulos said in April that Greece wanted to stage magical Games, an Olympic homecoming that would help the world to heal itself after the bitter divisions of the Iraq war.

The view from the street is more pragmatic.

"Some things are going to change but we still need better organisation and more hard work," said Georgios Siarkos, who runs a kiosk on the busy central Stadiou street. He gave an example of a tourist information office that shut down for renovation months ago, leaving visitors with nowhere to go.

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