For any other beginners out there, the "Acropolis" is the area on top of that big rock in the middle of Athens. Acropolis means "high city". The Parthenon is the famous temple up on the Acropolis, now a shadow of its former self after centuries of vandalism and theft, and a major explosion. There are also many other smaller temples and buildings on the Acropolis.
About 1810 the English Lord Elgin removed half of the extensive sculpture decorating the Parthenon and other buildings of the Acropolis, and shipped them to England. This was either blatant theft, or entirely legitimate, depending which side of the argument you take. The Elgin Marbles as they are known are still on display in the British Museum in London, but have been the subject of repeated efforts by Greece to get them returned.
Today we targeted the Acropolis Museum, which is where Greece keeps most of the artifacts from the Acropolis, in a modern museum where they are safe from further harm or weathering. It was only a ten minute walk and we were there. We were early so it was relatively quiet there.
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| The Acropolis Museum is huge and looks brand new. |
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| The museum is suspended over the ruins of an old neighbourhood. |
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| Some of the panels and sculpture from the Parthenon, laid out to actual scale. |
The top floor of the museum is an actual-size replica of the layout of the Parthenon, with metal pillars in place of stone ones, and all the marble works held by the museum laid out in their original positions. The sculptures are a mix of actual original pieces and replicas of pieces held in other museums, including the Elgin Marbles in London. The replicas are all pure white.
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| A model showing how the original sculpture from one end of the Parthenon would have looked. |
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| Ms X. |
After the museum we decided we could probably walk right around the Acropolis, so that is what we did. On three sides the Acropolis looks like a fortress, with high cliffs and walls making any access very difficult. The way in is from the west side, where the path took us up over a saddle. On that saddle is a rough rocky outcrop, called the Aeropagus Hill, which provides great views over the city, so we squeezed onto that along with dozens of others to admire the view. There was a fairly long queue waiting to buy tickets to enter the Acropolis.
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| Part way up the hill towards the entrance to the Acropolis. |
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| Many signs include English translations, thank goodness. |
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| Scrambling about on the slippery Aeropagus Hill rocks. |
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| The view from that rock. The Acropolis is above on the right. |
There was quite a lot of thunder about, so we did not hang about on that high exposed position for fear of being struck by lightning! Lot's of noise, but very little rain.
