Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
ATHENS AND AROUND
PLÁKA
Kanellopoulou Museum
Theorías 12 • Daily 8.30am-3pm • Free • Metro Monastiráki
Head for the highest street beneath the looming Acropolis walls, and you'll eventually
emerge by the eclectic
Kanellopoulou Museum
. This private collection should have fully
reopened after years or refurbishment (and may no longer be free; at the time of
writing, just one room was open), and is well worth a look. There's a bit of everything
- gilded icons, ancient jewellery, Classical-era pottery - and almost every object is a
superb example of its kind.
1
The Roman Forum
Entrance on Dhioskoúron • Daily: summer 8.30am-6.30pm; winter 8.30am-3pm • €2 or joint Acropolis ticket • Metro Monastiráki
he
Roman Forum
was built during the reign of Julius Caesar and his successor Augustus
as an extension of the older Agora. As today, its main entrance was on the west side,
through the
Gate of Athena Archegetis
. This gate marked the end of a street leading up
from the Greek Agora, and its four surviving columns give a vivid impression of the
grandeur of the original portal. On the side facing the Acropolis you can still make out an
engraved edict announcing the rules and taxes on the sale of oil. At the opposite end of
the Forum, a second gateway is also easily made out, and between the two is the
marketplace itself, surrounded by colonnades and shops, some of which have been
excavated. Inside the fenced site, but just outside the market area to the east, are the
foundations of public latrines dating from the first century AD.
Tower of the Winds
The best preserved and easily the most intriguing of the ruins inside the Forum site is
the graceful octagonal structure known as the
Tower of the Winds
. This predates the
Forum, and stands just outside the main market area. Designed in the first century BC
by Andronikos of Kyrrhos, a Syrian astronomer, it served as a compass, sundial,
weather vane and water clock - the latter powered by a stream from one of the
Acropolis springs. Each face of the tower is adorned with a relief of a figure floating
through the air, personifying the eight winds. Beneath each of these, it is still possible
to makeout the markings of eight sundials. On top of the building was a bronze
weather vane in the form of the sea god Triton. In Ottoman times, dervishes used the
tower as a
tekke
or ceremonial hall, terrifying their superstitious Orthodox neighbours
with their chanting, music and whirling meditation.
The Fethiye Mosque and Ottoman medresse
The oldest mosque in Athens, the
Fethiye Tzami
, built in 1458, occupies a corner of the
Forum site. It was dedicated by Sultan Mehmet II, who conquered Constantinople in
ROMAN ATHENS
In 146 BC, the
Romans
ousted Athens' Macedonian rulers and incorporated the city into their
vast new province of Achaia, whose capital was at Corinth. The city's status as a renowned seat
of learning (Cicero and Horace were educated here) and great artistic centre ensured that it
was treated with respect, and Athenian artists and architects were much in demand in Rome.
Athens, though, was a backwater - there were few major construction projects, and what
building there was tended to follow Classical Greek patterns.
The one Roman emperor who did spend a significant amount of time in Athens, and left his
mark here, was
Hadrian
(reigned 117-138 AD). Among his grandiose monuments are Hadrian's
Arch, a magnificent and immense library, and (though it had been begun centuries before) the
Temple of Olympian Zeus. A generation later
Herodes Atticus
, a Roman senator who owned
extensive lands in Marathon, became the city's last major benefactor of ancient times.
