Athens Directions
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Beach at Vouliagméni
Vouliagméni has some of the most attractive and exclusive beaches on the developed strip south of the city.
See SUBURBAN ATHENS
Temple of Afaia, Égina
The rural island of Égina seems another world – the serene Temple of Afaia can be reached by a good local bus service.
See FURTHER AFIELD
Náfplio
The beautiful old town of Náfplio, with its picturesque castles, attracts plenty of weekending Athenians, ensuring lively nightlife to go with the sights.
See FURTHER AFIELD
Póros
Picturesque Póros lies in close proximity to the mainland, ensuring a steady stream of customers for its fine waterfront restaurants and cafés.
See FURTHER AFIELD
Ferries from Pireás
Part of the magic of visiting the islands is the journey itself; an impressive array of ferries, catamarans and hydrofoils offer a smooth crossing as they run between the bustling port and the islands.
See SUBURBAN ATHENS
Out of Athens
Attica, the province surrounding Athens, has numerous attractions beyond the obvious ones offered by its beaches: above all, the important outposts of Classical Athens, made all the more appealing now by their rural isolation. Further out, some of the great sites, including Delphi and Mycenae, are an easy day-trip. The mountains, with their traditional villages, walking and even skiing opportunities, are yet another alternative.
Temple of Poseidon
Cape Soúnio and the beautiful temple that stands at its tip have long been a landmark for sailors approaching Athens.
See ATTICA
Eleusis
The Sanctuary of Demeter at Eleusis – accessible by city bus from Athens – was one of the most important in the ancient world.
See ATTICA
Mount Parnitha
Looking out from the ancient fortress of Phyle, just an hour from the centre of Athens, the unspoilt nature of Mount Parnitha is readily apparent.
See ATTICA
Rhamnous
Ancient Rhamnous is little visited, but the site enjoys a spectacular location overlooking the island of Évvia.
See ATTICA
Delphi
Delphi, home of the Delphic Oracle, was thought by the ancient Greeks to be the centre of the earth. It’s still among the most impressive of all ancient sites.
See FURTHER AFIELD
Mycenae
The discovery of Mycenae in the late nineteenth century was a seminal event in Greek archeology, proving that Homer and the stories of ancient, pre-Classical civilizations were not mere myth.
See FURTHER AFIELD
Places
The Acropolis
Pláka
Monastiráki and Psyrrí
Thissío, Gázi and Áno Petrálona
Platía Omónias and around
The Archeological Museum, Exárhia and Neápoli
Kolonáki & Lykavitós Hill
Sýndagma and around
Mets, Pangráti and Koukáki
Suburban Athens
Attica
Further Afield
The Acropolis
The rock of the Acropolis, crowned by the dramatic ruins of the Parthenon, is one of the archetypal images of Western culture. The first time you see it, rising above the traffic or from a distant hill, is extraordinary: foreign and yet utterly familiar. The Parthenon temple was always intended to be a landmark, and was famous throughout the ancient world. Yet even in their wildest dreams its creators could hardly have imagined that the ruins would come to symbolize the emergence of Western civilization – nor that, two-and-a-half millennia on, it would attract some three million tourists a year.
The Acropolis’s natural setting, a steep-sided, flat-topped crag of limestone rising abruptly a hundred metres from its surroundings, has made it the focus of the city during every phase of its development. Easily defensible and with plentiful water, its initial attractions are obvious – even now, with no function apart from tourism, it is the undeniable heart of the city, around which everything else clusters, glimpsed at almost every turn.
Crowds at the Acropolis can be horrendous – to avoid the worst, come very early or late in the day. The peak rush usually comes in late morning, when coach tours congregate before moving on to lunch elsewhere.
The sites included in this chapter fall within one of three separate fenced areas: the summit of the Acropolis, which includes the Parthenon itself, the Propylaia – the gateway through which the ancient sanctuary was entered – the Acropolis Museum, and other temples including the Erectheion and the Temple of Athena Nike; the South Slope with its two great theatres; and the Ancient Agora.
There are no shops or restaurants within the Acropolis area, although you can buy water and sandwiches, guidebooks, postcards and so on from a couple of stands near the Beule Gate. There’s also a handy branch of Everest right opposite Akropoli metro station (at the corner of Mariyiánniand Dhiakoú) and plenty of similar places around Monastiráki metro. If you want to sit down, there are cafés and tavernas nearby in almost every direction: see Pláka, Monastiráki, Makriyánni and Thissío.
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Acropolis tickets and opening times
A joint ticket (€12; free to under-18s and EU students; €6 for non-EU students and EU citizens over 65; free on public holidays and Sundays Nov–March) covers the Acropolis, Ancient Agora and South Slope, plus the Roman Forum, Kerameikos and the Temple of Olympian Zeus. The smaller sites also offer individual tickets, but only the joint one is valid for the summit of the Acropolis, so if you visit any of the others first, be sure to buy the multiple ticket or you simply end up paying twice; it can be used over four days, although there doesn’t seem to be any way of indicating when it was issued.
The Acropolis itself is open every day April–Sept 8am–7pm, Oct–March 8am–4.30pm. The South Slope (individual entry €2) and Ancient Agora (individual entry €4) are open daily April–Sept 8am–7pm, Oct–March 8.30am–3pm.
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Approaches to the Acropolis
The sites are ringed by a pedestrian walkway, allowing views of the Parthenon to be appreciated from almost every angle. You may get a little lost among the jumble of alleys in Pláka, but the rock itself is always there to guide you. The Acropolis itself can be entered only from the west, where there’s a big coach park at the bottom of the hill.
On foot, the most common approach to the ruins is from the northwest corner of Pláka, on a path that extends above Odhós Dhioskoúron where it joins Theorías. You can also approach from the south, where pedestrianized Dhionysíou Areopayítou (Metro Akropoli) offers access to the South Slope; from the north via the Ancient Agora (entrance on Adhrianoú; Metro Monastiráki); or, slightly further but repaid with excellent views of both Agora and Acropolis, from Thissío along traffic-free Apostólou Pávlou (Metro Thissío).
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The Propylaia
Main Acropolis site.
Today, as throughout history, the Propylaia are the gateway to the Acropolis. In Classical times the road extended along a steep ramp to this monumental double-gatehouse; the modern path makes a more gradual, zigzagging ascent, passing first through an arched Roman entrance, the Beule Gate, added in the third century AD.
The Propylaia were constructed by Mnesikles from 437–432 BC, and their axis and proportions aligned to balance the recently completed Parthenon. They were built from the same marble as the temple, and in grandeur and architectural achievement are almost as impressive. The ancient Athenians, awed by the fact that such wealth and craftsmanship should be used for a purely secular building, ranked this as their most prestigious monument.
Walking through the gateway, which would originally have had great wooden doors, is your only chance to enter any of the ancient buildings atop the Acropolis. To the left of the central hall (which before Venetian bombardment supported a grea
t coffered roof, painted blue and gilded with stars), the Pinakotheke was an early art gallery, exhibiting paintings of Homeric subjects by Polygnotus. The wing to the right is much smaller, as Mnesikles’s original design incorporated ground sacred to the Goddess of Victory and the premises had to be adapted as a waiting room for her shrine – the Temple of Athena Nike.
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The development of the Acropolis
The rocky Acropolis was home to one of the earliest known settlements in Greece, its slopes inhabited by a Neolithic community around 5000 BC. In Mycenaean times it was fortified with Cyclopean walls (parts of which can still be seen), enclosing a royal palace and temples to the goddess Athena. By the ninth century BC, the Acropolis had become the heart of Athens, the first Greek city-state, sheltering its principal public buildings.
Most of the substantial remains seen today date from the fifth century BC or later, by which time the buildings here were purely religious. The entire area was reconstructed in 449 BC, following its sacking during the Persian Wars. This vast project, coinciding with the Golden Age of Classical Athens, was masterminded by Pericles and carried out under the general direction of the architect and sculptor Pheidias. It was completed in an incredibly short time: the Parthenon itself took only ten years to finish.
The monuments survived barely altered for close to a thousand years, until in the reign of Emperor Justinian the temples were converted to Christian places of worship. Over the following centuries, the uses became secular as well as religious, and embellishments increased, gradually obscuring the Classical designs. Fifteenth-century Italian princes held court in the Propylaia, and the same quarters were later used by the Turks as their commander’s headquarters and as a powder magazine. The Parthenon underwent similar changes from Greek to Roman temple, from Byzantine church to Frankish cathedral, before several centuries of use as a Turkish mosque. The Erechtheion, with its graceful female figures, saw service as a harem.
The Acropolis buildings finally fell victim to war, blown up during successive attempts by the Venetians to oust the Turks. In 1684 the Turks demolished the Temple of Athena Nike to gain a brief tactical advantage. Three years later the Venetians, laying siege to the hill, ignited a Turkish gunpowder magazine in the Parthenon, in the process blasting off its roof and starting a fire that raged for two days and nights.
The process of stripping down to the bare ruins seen today was completed by souvenir hunters and the efforts of the first archeologists.
The fate of the buildings since has been little happier. After Independence, Greek archeologists cleared the Turkish village that had developed around the Parthenon-mosque and did work intended to preserve the structures: in the long run, though, much of this proved destructive. Meanwhile, earthquakes have dislodged the foundations; generations of feet have slowly worn down surfaces; and, more recently, sulphur dioxide deposits, caused by vehicle and industrial pollution, have been turning the marble to dust.
Since a 1975 report predicted the collapse of the Parthenon, visitors have been barred from its actual precinct, and a major, long-term restoration scheme of the entire Acropolis embarked upon. With the work completed as a result of the 2004 Olympics, the Acropolis would be free of scaffolding and reconstruction work for the first time in decades.
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The Panathenaic Way
Main Acropolis site.
The Panathenaic Way was the route along which the great procession for ancient Athens’ Panathenaic Festival, in honour of the city’s patron goddess Athena, passed every four years. The procession wound right through the Classical city from the gates now in the Kerameikos site via the Propylaia to the Parthenon and, finally, the Erectheion. One of the best-preserved stretches of the ancient route, which was of course used as a road between festivals too, can be seen just inside the Propylaia. Here you can make out grooves cut for footholds in the rock and, to either side, niches for innumerable statues and offerings. In Classical times it ran past a ten-metre-high bronze statue of Athena Promachos (Athena the Champion), whose base can just about be made out. Athena’s spear and helmet were said to be visible to sailors approaching from as far away as Sounío. The statue was moved to Constantinople in Byzantine times and later destroyed.
The Temple of Athena Nike
Main Acropolis site.
Simple and elegant, the Temple of Athena Nike stands on a precipitous platform overlooking the port of Pireás and the Saronic Gulf. The temple’s frieze depicts the Athenians’ victory over the Persians at Plateia. A relief from inside the temple, Victory Adjusting her Sandal, is now one of the star exhibits in the Acropolis Museum. It was from this site that in myth King Aegeus maintained a vigil for the return of his son Theseus after slaying the Minotaur on Crete – and where Aegeus threw himself to his death, mistakenly believing Theseus had perished.
Amazingly, the whole temple was demolished by the Turks, who used its material for a gun emplacement, and reconstructed from its original blocks two hundred years later. The same process was undertaken in the run-up to the 2004 Olympic Games – the temple was temporarily dismantled and its pieces taken away for restoration and cleaning.
The best views of the temple are from inside the Acropolis, to the right after passing through the Propylaia. Here also are the scant remains of a Sanctuary of Brauronian Artemis. Although its function remains obscure, it is known that the precinct once housed a colossal bronze representation of the Wooden Horse of Troy. More noticeable is a nearby stretch of Mycenaean wall (running parallel to the Propylaia) that was incorporated into the Classical design.
The Parthenon
Main Acropolis site.
The Parthenon was the first great building in Pericles’ scheme, intended as a new sanctuary for Athena and a home for her cult image – a colossal wooden statue of Athena Polias (Athena of the City) overlaid with ivory and gold plating, with precious gems as eyes and an ivory gorgon death’s-head on her breast. The sculpture has long been lost, but numerous later copies exist (including a fine Roman one in the National Archeological Museum). Despite the statue, the Parthenon never rivalled the Erechtheion in sanctity, and its role tended to remain that of treasury and artistic showcase.
Originally the Parthenon’s columns were brightly painted and it was decorated with the finest sculpture of the Classical age, depicting the Panathenaic procession, the birth of Athena and the struggles of Greeks to overcome giants, Amazons and centaurs –also brightly coloured. Of these, the best surviving examples are in the British Museum in London; the Acropolis Museum has others, but the greater part of the pediments, along with the central columns and the cella, were destroyed by the Venetian bombardment in 1687.
To achieve the Parthenon’s exceptional harmony of design, its architect, Iktinos, used every trick known to the Doric order of architecture. Every ratio – length to width, width to height, and even such relationships as the distances between the columns and their diameter – is constant, while any possible appearance of disproportion is corrected by meticulous mathematics and craftsmanship.
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The Parthenon Marbles
The controversy over the so-called Elgin Marbles has its origin in the activities of Western looters at the start of the nineteenth century. Chief among these were the French ambassador Fauvel, gathering antiquities for the Louvre, and the British ambassador Lord Elgin. Elgin obtained permission from the Turks to erect scaffolding, excavate and remove stones with inscriptions. He interpreted this concession as a licence to make off with almost all of the bas-reliefs from the Parthenon’s frieze, most of its pedimental structures and a caryatid from the Erechtheion – all of which he later sold to the British Museum. There were perhaps justifications for Elgin’s action at the time – not least the Turks’ tendency to use Parthenon stones in their limekilns, and possible further ravages of war – though it was controversial even then.
The Greeks hope that the long-awaited completion of the new Acropolis Museum will create the perfect oppor
tunity for the British Museum to bow to pressure and return the marbles. But despite a campaign begun by Greek actress and culture minister Melina Mercouri in the early 1980s, there is so far little sign of that happening.
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The Erechtheion
Main Acropolis site.
The Erechtheion was the last of the great works of Pericles to be completed. Both Athena and the city’s old patron, Poseidon (known here as Erechtheus), were worshipped here, in the most revered of the ancient temples. The site is the oldest on the Acropolis, home to the original Mycenaean palace. It was here, according to myth, that Athena and Poseidon wrangled for possession of Athens. A contest was held to decide their rival claims, judged by their fellow Olympian gods. At the touch of Athena’s spear, the first ever olive tree sprang from the ground, while Poseidon summoned forth a spring of sea water. Athena won, and became patron of the city.
Today, the sacred objects within are long gone, but the series of elegant Ionic porticoes survive, the north one with a particularly fine decorated doorway and frieze of blue Eleusinian marble. By far the most striking feature, however, is the famous Porch of the Caryatids, whose columns form the tunics of six tall maidens. The ones in situ are, sadly, replacements. Five of the originals are in the Acropolis Museum, while a sixth was looted by Elgin, who also removed a column and other purely architectural features – they’re replaced here by casts in a different colour marble.