We saved our last day in Greece for Athens. We'd been told by many people that a day is all you need in Athens. While I can't verify if thats true, a day in Athens in July is all we could handle. The heat was overwhelming. It's a thick heat that wears you down and brings about bodily discomfort that makes you want to scream. When we got off the ferry, we took a bus back to the airport to store our bags for the day. From there, we caught another bus back to the city center. There were no taxis in operation in Athens for the day. The cabbies all went on strike to show their anger at a new law that will make it easier to get a cab license. Our first stop was the Acropolis.
From there, we had to walk up to the actual Acropolis area which is separate from the Theater. This is another one of the many tickets to get into historical monuments. Playing find the shade up there is next to impossible in the middle of the day. The first part you enter is known as Propylaea. It was built as an entrance way into the Acropolis. The little temple shown sits off to the right of the Propylaea and is dedicated to Athena Nike, the goddess of war and wisdom. In 431 BC, the Peloponnesian War broke out and the structure was never finished. Archaeologists have found evidence that there were plans to build more but they were never brought to fruition. From here, you can look out over the western part of the city and see just how far it spans. To the right, there's a hill with another large statue but we couldn't see anyone walking up there so we thought it not worth the effort to go check with the heat getting more intense.
It's just hard not to keep snapping photos of this place. As we mentioned earlier, shade in Greece in the summer is a valuable commodity. Unfortunately, there wasn't a whole lot of it but we moved from one small part to another to keep cool. There are water fountains across the area to provide much needed hydration, although its a bit luke warm and doesn't do much to quench thirst. The final big chalupa in this place is the infamous Parthenon. It's dedicated to Athena and is the newer of two temples built for her. It's construction start date is a couple of decades after the destruction of the previous temple by the Persians. Many consider it the most important building surviving from Classic Greece and the ultimate representation of the Doric order.
We had a long lunch because the restaurant as air conditioned and we wanted to cool off. Afterwards, we headed towards the Kerameikos site. It is also included in the big ticket we purchased that day. Every bit of refreshment we had from lunch was gone halfway there. We passed the square you see pictured above on the way. The site is part of the old potter's quarter, thus the use of the English word ceramic for pottery stuff. They have a museum of artifacts recovered from the site. Many of the items are urns and other ceramic jars for wedding celebrations. A cemetery was discovered at the site as well.
Around five thirty, we'd been up for twelve hours and the heat was just too much. We walked around the Parliament area where all the Athens protesting had been taking place. As you can see, there weren't many people about, especially any throwing rocks and stones. There were lots of people though, camped out like in Madrid. We caught the express bus back to the airport where we spent the night. Two nights without a bed was rough. Luckily, the airport has 24 hour food available, wall plugs, and some free internet service so we were able to get by until we got to Istanbul, Turkey.
Visiting Athens without seeing the Acropolis would be a crime. The place has an amazing amount of artifacts and the history of the city is complex. The city was home to Plato, Aristotle, and many other minds that laid the groundwork of modern western thought and ideals. Some even say that Athens was the birthplace of democracy. When you go to the Acropolis, you buy a ticket that gets you into six different historical monuments around the city. The first one you visit at the base of the hill is the Theater of Dionysus. It was built almost 2500 years ago and hosted the festivals to honor the Dionysus, the god of wine and patron of drama. The famous Oedipus Rex by Sophocles was probably performed here. Amazingly, the theater could hold 25,000 people and all of them could hear the actors without a problem.
The next stop was the Odeon of Herodes Atticus. It's another theater with an even steeper seating arrangement. It was built in 161 AD by Herodes in memory of his wife. Today, it's restored form is the host of the festivals of Athens.
The next structure we came across was the Old Temple dedicated to Athena, the patron deity of the city. It was still pretty well intact. Some of it had been restored over the years but there was a controversy over the restoration because it didn't follow what some archaeologists believed were the original designs of the temple. The temple was destroyed by Persians when they sacked the city in 480 BC. It's also believed they burned a wooden statue of Athena during the raid.
Pictured here is the Erechtheum. This place is interesting because it's built on a slope so the corners don't match up. It's famous for the south side columns that are six women draped in cloth. It's called the Porch of the Maidens and provides a different feel than the standard columns. This temple housed some of the holiest relics of Athena like the sacred salt well and the sacred olive tree.
During the early years, the Parthenon served as a treasury building. Later, it was converted into a Christian church. It was then converted into a mosque when the Ottoman Turks conquered Greece. They even built a minaret inside of it. During the 17th century, the Ottomans housed ammunition in the Parthenon. When the Venetians tried to take the city, they set off an explosion that caused most of the damage to the Parthenon. Some of its pieces have been sold to the British Museum in London. The Greeks have been trying in vain to get the pieces back to the original site. The pediments that are still there depict the birth of Athena. Apparently, her father Zeus had a bad headache and ordered Hephaestus to strike him on the head to alleviate the pain. The hit was so hard that his head split open and out popped Athena.
We were looking for some lunch when we happened upon the Temple of Olympic Zeus. Outside of it is an old archway with a small temple on top. The Temple of Olympic Zeus was started in the 6th century BC by Pisistratus but later stopped. His sons picked up the project again and decided to build it on a grander scale. There plans were derailed when their father was overthrown and exiled from the kingdom. The Greeks left it alone because they found it overly arrogant to build on such a grand scale. Later in the 2nd century, the ruler Seleucid completed the project only for it to be destroyed when another group sacked the city. Through the medieval times, the building was chopped down in bits as people needed its materials for other projects. The remaining columns are whats left of materials not needed. At the far end, there is one column that fell over in a storm and broke into many pieces.
The excavations were started at the end of the 19th century and continues to the present. A recent discovery was made when the Athens Metro system was digging near there for a station. They found over 1,000 tombs from the 4th and 5th centuries. We wandered through the museum and out through the city ruins and cemetery. There were a few workers out there but none of them had any good information because they'd all just started working there.
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