The Athens Acropolis and Museum

My Wow, I’m in Athens! moment came quickly after my arrival. After my driver picked me up at the airport and drove me to the hotel, I checked in and took the elevator to the hotel’s tenth floor restaurant. Once you exit the elevator and take a few steps towards the greeter, look up: The Acropolis. Wow!

It’s obvious why the restaurant is situated where it is: day or night it’s an incredible view. I believe Athens has fewer tall apartment buildings or skyscrapers to allow as many views of the Acropolis as possible. Definitely good for tourism. And very, VERY impressive.

This inspiring introduction to Athens meant that visiting the Acropolis was at the top of my to-do list. Ostensibly I traveled to Athens for business – speaking at Devoxx Greece – but added personal days so I could explore Athens, the Acropolis being a definite no-brainer.

What Is The Acropolis?

The Acropolis is today the remains of buildings considered architecturally and historically significant located atop an outcrop 150m/490ft above Athens. The remains most visible and often referred to as Acropolis are of the Parthenon. Originally built of marble in the 5th century BCE, the Parthenon was partially destroyed during the Great Turkish War when Venetian bombings ignited a power magazine in 1697. The Turks gave permission to Thomas Bruce, Lord Elgin to “legally” loot the site, taking artifacts now known as the Elgin Marbles to England, an ongoing point of contention between Greece and the United Kingdom.

Restoration work on the Parthenon and other buildings began in 1975 and continues today on building remains on the outcrop and the surrounding hills, technically an on-going construction site with heavy equipments and workers scurrying around in hard hats.

Visiting The Acropolis

The Acropolis ruins and surrounding hillside are a secured site requiring tickets for entry. I walked to the main ticket office entrance, perhaps two-thirds up the hill, and arrived just prior to 8am opening. Though I believe tickets can be purchased on-site, daily visitors are limited to prevent overcrowding so I recommend purchasing tickets in advance to ensure entry.

[I exited farther down the hill on Dionysiou Areopagitou, which was conveniently close to the museum. I believe this is also an entrance but without a ticket office.]

Odeon of Herodes Atticus

There are multiple paths from the ticket office entrance to the plateau, and the path I took me to reconstructed, open-air theater which is still very nice. Very nice views of the stage and Athens beyond.

Propylaea

From the amphitheater you proceed up a wide marble staircase that was the monumental entrance to the Acropolis, now a tourist path to get you to the top where all the remains are.

Parthenon

The Parthenon is the largest and most recognized of all the ruins at the Acropolis and is often thought of as the Acropolis. As with many ruins here, the Parthenon was built in the 5th Century BCE as a temple and city treasury. The Ottoman Empire used it as a weapons dump, resulting in severe damage when a bomb landed on it during an attack by the Venetians.

My first reaction upon seeing it up close is amazement: its size and scale; the craftsmanship; its existence millennium after its creation. Simply stunning at how much the ancient Greeks accomplished by hand, even transporting the marble from a nearby quarry. In fact, marble required to recreate missing portions of the Parthenon comes from the same quarry today.

My second reaction is when I realized that it’s an active construction site. Renovations have been in progress since 1975: repairing problems introduced by previous, well-intentioned renovations; reassembling the jigsaw puzzle from the various pieces strewn everywhere, including taking out misplaced pieces; creating replacement pieces; and overall stabilization. It’s a huge task without consensus on how certain work should proceed.

And ultimately I struggled to reconcile the fact that one of the most visited sites in Greece, if not the world, is essentially an on-going construction project. One potentially without end. Yes, progress achieved but will the work ever be done?

Elgin Marbles

The Greeks are not shy about mentioning the stolen Elgin Marbles whenever the chance presents itself, almost to a fault: were the so-called thefts really more damaging than the explosion or the ravages of nature? No question that British explorers, archeologists, and scientists absconded with plenty from various countries and colonies which continue to cause political problems. For all I know, the pieces in the British Museum are in better condition than what remains here.

No doubt that politically Britain will finally relent and return the marbles, likely in my lifetime.

Other Remains

The Acropolis has the remains of multiple other buildings that surrounded the Parthenon: Temple of Athena Nike, Erectheion, Monument of Agrippa, Sanctuary of Artemis Brauronia, etc., each with informational signage explaining its importance. I walked throughout, reading everything, looking at the ruins or statues or whatever, but ultimately it’s just a lot of marble: some definitely in better shape than others, but ultimately marble ruins.

City Views

Second only to Lycabettus Hill in elevation, the Acropolis outcrop provides stunning 360° views of Athens. I definitely recommend heading to the outer edges and peering out at the city below.

Final Thoughts

I left with mixed feelings: incredible feats of engineering, incredible architecture, amazed that it still exists, and yet it’s an on-going construction site with strewn marble remnants waiting to be reassembled.

Regardless, I’d still recommend visiting, but set your expectations accordingly.

Acropolis Museum

The current Acropolis Museum was opened in 2009 after further excavations made the original museum on top of the Acropolis too small and inadequate for the storage and display of the number of artifacts worth of display. The museum is south of the Acropolis and is a short walk from the exit of the south slope of the Acropolis grounds.

Acropolis Museum Archeological Excavation

Underneath the walkway that leads you to the museum entrance, signs indicate something that you can visit prior to entering the museum. Truthfully, I wasn’t actually sure what it was but decided to check it out and came across an excavation underneath the walkway and the museum.

Know that to walk through the excavation requires a ticket, either your museum ticket or paid for separately. I had purchased my museum ticket in advance and therefore saw the excavation prior to entering the museum.

Signs along the visitor path explains the age and purpose of the different buildings: home, kitchens, shops, latrines, etc. A gorgeous tile floor somehow survived the centuries before being uncovered. What I found fascinating is the different centuries represented in this single dig, how some buildings survived, were replaced, or were built over, depending on need. Unless your an archeologist, you’ll need your imagination to visualize what you think you’re looking at, but very worthwhile stop to get into the right mindset before entering the museum.

The Museum

The museum is housed in a modern, brightly-lit building with wide pathways to handle the tourist hordes that visit Athens and the Acropolis. After your ticket is scanned, you walk up a wide staircase to the first floor where the permanent exhibits start. Don’t be surprised if you need to navigate around groups waiting for their privately-hired guide to start their tour of the museum.

[Warning: even in April, technically shoulder-season for tourism, you could see how the museum could become gridlocked with too many visitors. Multiple guides leading multiple groups through the museum would stop and block views and paths. It can’t imagine how bad it may become during summers!]

What’s On Display?

• building and monument artifacts which may be returned to the Acropolis when renovations could reincorporate them;
• buildings and monument artifacts too damaged to be reincorporated;
• plaster copies of ruins left at the Acropolis;
• artifacts used in every-day ancient Rome, excavated at the Acropolis or nearby;
• Elgin Marble reconstructions to enhance the narrative of how they were stolen from Greece.

The first and second floors have different statues, monuments, friezes, and architectural pieces. The Parthenon is the focus of the third floor, where the friezes on all sides are displayed with detailed explanations.

Final Thoughts

Overall an excellent museum: great display spaces, easy to navigate (tourist hordes notwithstanding), well-written descriptions of the exhibits. The second floor has a veranda with cafe providing an relaxing outdoor space to re-energize before continuing your day, especially helpful if you first stopped at the Acropolis.

In retrospective, I might have preferred starting with the museum before visiting the Acropolis, as the museum provides context and background that would have been helpful when on the outcrop; however, that means a mid-afternoon visit with higher temperatures and many more tourists. I didn’t have the option of splitting the two across multiple days.

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All images © 2025 Scott C Sosna, all rights reserved.