Acropolis, an impressive ancient history spotlight

The Acropolis of Athens is an ancient citadel situated above the city of Athens on a rocky outcrop and includes the ruins of many ancient buildings of great historical and architectural importance, the most prominent one being the Parthenon.

The Acropolis is the one ancient site that must not be missed. Take a guided tour or explore on your own, but avoid going during the middle of the day unless it is cloudy. Heat exhaustion can prevent you from fully appreciating the world’s best archaeological sites.

The Acropolis is now more accessible than ever, and the walk there is pleasant thanks to the transformation of the broad avenues to the south and west of the site (Apostolou Pavlou in Thission and Dionysiou Areopagitou in Makrianni) into wide pedestrian thoroughfares lined with shops, cafes, and restaurants. It’s always been a pleasant, car-free stroll between Plaka and Monastiraki, and all you have to do to get there is head uphill from wherever you are and turn right when you reach the top and see woods where buildings once were.

The entryway, known as the Propylaea, was finished in 432 B.C.E., soon before the start of the Peloponnesian Wars. Mnesicles, a friend and colleague of Phidias, was the principal architect. There’s the Pinacotheca and a Hellenistic pedestal on your left, and the little temple to Nike Athena, also known as Athena of Victory, on your right.

Both were built to honor Athens’ triumph over the Persians. A figure of Athena once stood in this modest temple, which is perched on a platform with views of the islands in the Saronic Gulf. In 1686, the Turks demolished it to utilize the platform for a massive cannon. Between 1836 and 1842, it was reconstructed, and in 1936, when the crumbling platform was discovered, it was dismantled again. Ships docked in the port of Piraeus, the islands, and the mountains of the Peloponnesos may all be seen from the propylaea on a clear day.

Pericles, an Athenian in the fifth century BC, erected the Parthenon and other major structures on the Acropolis to honor the city’s historical, cultural, and political achievements. Acropolis literally means “upper city,” and many of the ancient Greek city-states were constructed around an acropolis so that residents would have a safe haven in the event of an invasion.

This is why most holy structures are located on an acropolis. It’s the most secure location in all of town. There were still homes on the Acropolis of Athens as recently as 150 years ago. Readers of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata may recall that the Athens women, fed up with their men fighting Sparta, locked themselves in the citadel as a form of protest. It was a brilliant technique that might work even now: cut off their access to sex, food, and care.

But the play did pave the way for future comedies to address sexual frustration, and without that, we might not have had Woody Allen. Even in modern times, the Acropolis has been closed to tourists on occasion due to protests by site personnel. Some of these visitors have been waiting a lifetime to visit Greece. Fortunately, they don’t happen often and usually don’t last long.

The greatest time to visit is in the late winter or spring, when grass and wildflowers seem to sprout out of every crack in the stone mountain. The Acropolis can be surprisingly verdant even in the months of December, January, and February. One cannot be adequately prepared for the Parthenon’s massiveness by viewing a thousand images.

The architects Kallikrates and Iktinos created the structure to house a massive figure of Athena. It was started in 532 BC and finished in 438 BC, and it is the second most recognisable building in the world after the McDonald’s golden arches. It was first used as a temple, then a church, and then as a mosque before it was converted into a storage facility for Turkish gunpowder. The Venetians attacked it from below with artillery in 1687.

When the cannon ball struck the gun powder, it exploded. The fact that the Parthenon appears to be constructed from modular components is one of its many interesting aspects. The columns, for instance, are constructed from stacked stones; any individual stone might be swapped out for another. Not so.

The Parthenon is like the largest and heaviest jigsaw puzzle ever put together, with each piece being completely unique. In spite of appearances, not all lines are truly straight. In order to trick the eye into perceiving a straight line, the ancient Greeks knew that it was necessary to taper or curve the line.

The Parthenon is universally regarded as the finest and most frequently replicated structure of all time. You should expect this repair work to continue for another 30 years at least. The more they work to restore it, the more they come to admire and revere the ancient Greeks who built it.

The Herod Atticus Theatre was constructed by the Romans in 161 AD and is still in use today, hosting events as diverse as classical concerts, ballet, and Yanni. Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides, and Aristophanes all performed at the Theatre of Dionysious, the earliest stone theatre. Around 342 BC, Lykourgos reconstructed it, and the Romans later expanded it so they could hold gladiator bouts there.