Up the Acropolis

 


My daughter Mairi and I visited Athens in early November and of course one of the highlights was a visit to the Acropolis. Although it was November the weather was very pleasant and the site was quite busy. 
I won't bore you with all the facts about the Acropolis as they are easily found on Wikipedia, but suffice it to say that this hill has been fortified and occupied since the 6th millennium BC and there have been other temples built and destroyed before the existing Parthenon was constructed under Pericles (460-430 BC). Now the Parthenon, the main temple on the Acropolis and dedicated to the goddess Athena, is under constant renovation and much of it is covered in scaffolding.
We came onto the Acropolis through the lesser used southern gate and could immediately see the Odeon built by  Herodes Atticus in AD 161. This was rebuilt in 1950 and is used every year for the Athens Festival.


We walked up the hill until we came to the entrance gate of the temple mound, the Propylaea, flanked by the graceful Temple of Nike.




Through the gate we came to the plateau of the top of the Acropolis which was landscaped in 500 BC to give a flat base for the buildings. Here is the classical picture of the Acropolis which gives you little appreciation of the amount of work going on, or the number of tourists.



Here you can see the scaffolding and ongoing renovations.







And here are the tourists, a lot of them had tour guides. I can't really comment though, as we were doing exactly the same thing, but not with quite so many selfies.








Here is our selfie


Next  pictures of the pediments of the Parthenon, and a dandelion!




There are other temples on the Acropolis site including the Erechtheion (421-406 BC) which was built on very uneven ground and has a very complicated plan to minimise this.







Walking back down through the gates of the Acropolis we passed the great wall which runs around the whole site and was first built in 1300-1200 BC. In the shadow of the wall is another temple, the Sanctuary of Asclepieion, founded 419-418 BC and dedicated to the god of medicine, maybe as a response to the plague which was epidemic at the time. It acted as a rudimentary hospital.


Under the wall is also the Theatre of Dionysus. In this picture you can see how immense the wall surrounding the Acropolis is.


We had a great time on the Acropolis and left the site by the main gate which is opposite the Acropolis Museum, our next agenda.































Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ten days on Zuza to St Kilda - 11th June - we go ashore in Village Bay

Image
  We had had a good night anchored just off shore in Village Bay on Hirta,  St Kilda's main island. When we woke up the sky was clear and the visibility good and I felt very proud of being able to make a panorama of the shore from the slightly rolling boat. There was one other small yacht tied up in the bay. The other yacht in the bay with Stac Levenish in the background In the panorama, if you enlarge the picture, you can see the bay, the sandy shore, with the military buildings at the front of the shoreline, the old village spread out some way behind and then a jumble of walls and stones going off into the distance. However by the time we had had breakfast and got out in the dinghy to go on land a fog had descended limiting our views of the hills. It seemed good though to explore in the conditions that must prevail on St Kilda most of the time! As we climbed the jetty I noticed some kelp in the water that looked just like a fish skeleton. St Kilda had been inhabited by man since
Read more

Ten days on Zuza to St Kilda - 8th June - we go aboard in Oban

Image
  We have never booked a holiday a year in advance before so the anticipation leading up to our sea trip on yacht Zuza was immense. We had arrived in Oban the night before and at the appointed hour (2.00pm) we wheeled all our luggage, far too much with cameras, a laptop, walking boots and Alan's, new to him, yachting trousers and jacket recently purchased from eBay, down the jetty and onto the boat. The good ship Zuza is a Bermudan cutter rig ship built in 1998 as an expedition boat for the Royal Geographical Society. She is 22m long and weighs a  goodly 42 tonnes. When we were on her there were 3 crew and 8 guests who occupied two twin bunk cabins and two double en suite ones. I was too late to get a double cabin so we were in a twin. With a saloon and a covered wheel house she was perfect to take us all the way to St Kilda and then around some of the Hebrides. Bear with me while I introduce everyone. Neil was the Captain, Erin the First Mate, and Grosia the chef. Neil was very la
Read more

A weekend in the Dingle, a damp drive and exciting lichen

Image
We woke to a drizzle the day after our 'Tom Crean experience'. We had not enlisted for the Tom Crean 19 mile endurance walk, and luckily that was sold out anyway, and given the weather would not have been pleasant by any yardstick. Instead we did what any old codger would do under the circumstances and go for a drive. The Slea Head Drive to be more precise and part of what the Dingle tourist board call the 'Wild Atlantic Way'. Wet and wild that particular Saturday. It is manners to drive clockwise around this circular route as the road is very narrow and cars coming the other way, as a couple did, cause all the traffic to snarl up. We started in Dingle where we stopped briefly by the harbour, before continuing until we shortly came to a museum. It was a private, commercial sort of venture, run by an American and called the Celtic and Prehistory Museum. And it was actually very interesting, containing some animal skeletons and stone axes and other such artefacts. Th
Read more

The Ancient Agora of Athens

Image
  After our trip to the seaside we thought we should examine more of the ancient sites of Athens. So we walked to the district of Monasteriki, the very busy touristic area, where behind iron railings lies the Greek Agora. This occupies a large area and was originally a place where the Athenians senate met, as well as holding the market, places for socialising, temples and craftsmen's workshops. We started by walking up the hill to the Temple of Hephaestus which overlooks the Agora. This temple was completed around 430BC and as Hephaestus was the patron god of metal work and craftsmanship it was built on a very fitting site, although it was used as church from the 7th century AD to 1833. We passed workmen tidying as we walked. From the top we got very good views over Athens. Directly under the temple lies the site of the ancient Bouleuterion which was the senate house where political discussion took place and the Metroon where the state archives were kept. The boule was a sort of pa
Read more