Frommer's Review
The Agora was Athens's commercial and civic center. People used these buildings for a wide range of political, educational, philosophical, theatrical, and athletic purposes -- which may be why it now seems such a jumble of ancient buildings, inscriptions, and fragments of sculpture. This is a pleasant place to wander, enjoy the views up toward the Acropolis, and take in the herb garden and flowers planted around the amazingly well-preserved 5th-century-B.C. Temple of Hephaistos and Athena (the Theseion).
Find a shady spot by the temple, sit a while, and imagine the Agora teeming with merchants, legislators, and philosophers -- but very few women. Women did not regularly go into public places. Athens's best-known philosopher, Socrates, often strolled here with his disciples, including Plato, in the shade of the Stoa of Zeus Eleutherios. In 399 B.C., Socrates, accused of "introducing strange gods and corrupting youth," was sentenced to death. He drank his cup of hemlock in a prison at the southwest corner of the Agora -- where excavators centuries later found small clay cups, just the right size for a fatal drink. St. Paul also spoke in the Agora; he irritated many Athenians because he rebuked them as superstitious when he saw an inscription here to the "Unknown God."
The one monument you can't miss in the Ancient Agora is the 2nd-century-B.C. Stoa of Attalos, built by King Attalos of Pergamon in Asia Minor, and completely reconstructed by American archaeologists in the 1950s. (You may be grateful that they included an excellent modern restroom there.) The museum on the stoa's ground floor contains finds from 5,000 years of Athenian history, including sculpture and pottery, a voting machine, and a child's potty seat, all labeled in English. The stoa is open Tuesday through Sunday from 8:30am to 2:45pm.
As you leave the stoa, take a moment to look at the charming little 11th-century Byzantine Church of the Holy Apostles, also restored by the Americans. The church is almost always closed, but its delicate proportions are a relief after the somewhat heartless -- too new and too well restored -- facade of the Stoa of Attalos.
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