Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The Acropolis
he
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. As in
other Greek cities the Acropolis itself is simply the highest point of the city, and this
steep-sided, flat-topped crag of limestone, rising abruptly 100m from its surroundings,
has made it the focus of Athens 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.
You can walk an entire circuit of the Acropolis and ancient Agora on
pedestrianized
streets
, allowing them to be appreciated from almost every angle: in particular, the
pedestrianization has provided spectacular terraces for cafés to the west, in Thissío. On
the other side, in Pláka, you may get a little lost among the jumble of alleys, but the
rock itself is always there to guide you.
ARRIVAL AND INFORMATION
1
Tickets
A joint ticket covers the Acropolis, Ancient Agora
and South Slope, plus the Roman Forum, Hadrian's Library,
Kerameikos and 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. The ticket can be used over four days.
Getting there
To avoid the worst of the crowds come very
early in the day, or late. The peak rush comes in late
morning, when coach tours congregate before moving on to
lunch elsewhere. The summit can be entered only from the
west, where there's a big coach park at the bottom of the
hill: bus #230 from Sýndagma will take you almost to the
entrance. On foot, the obvious approach is from Metro
A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE ACROPOLIS
The Acropolis was home to one of the earliest known settlements in Greece, as early as 5000
BC. In
Mycenaean
times - around 1500 BC - it was fortified with Cyclopean walls (parts of
which can still be seen), enclosing a royal palace and temples to the cult of Athena. By the
ninth century BC, the Acropolis had become the heart of Athens, sheltering its principal public
buildings, which remained there until in 510 BC the Oracle at Delphi ordered that the
Acropolis should remain the
province of the gods
, unoccupied by humans.
Following the Persian sacking of Athens in 480 BC, a grand rebuilding project under the
direction of the architect and sculptor
Fidias
created almost everything you see today in an
incredibly short time: the Parthenon itself took only ten years to finish. The monuments
survived unaltered for close to a thousand years, until in the reign of Emperor Justinian the
temples were converted to
Christian
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. A Venetian diplomat
described the Acropolis in 1563 as “looming beneath a swarm of glittering golden crescents”,
with a minaret rising from the Parthenon. For all their changes in use, however, the buildings
would still have resembled - very much more than today's bare ruins - the bustling and
ornate ancient Acropolis, covered in sculpture and painted in bright colours.
Sadly, such images remain only in the prints and sketches of that period: the Acropolis buildings
finally fell victim to the ravages of war, blown up during successive attempts by the Venetians to
oust the Turks. In 1687, laying siege to the garrison, they ignited a Turkish gunpowder magazine in
the Parthenon, and in the process blasted off its roof and set a
ire
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 (see box, p.70).
