Athens Attractions

Note: There's really nothing to see in Piraeus, where your ship docks. All the sites are in Athens, a subway, bus, or taxi ride away.

For the 2004 Olympics, Athens created The Archaeological Park, a swath of tree-lined walkways that follow the city's ancient street network to connect its most important ancient monuments, from Hadrian's Arch past the Acropolis to the Ancient Agora. The walkways have completely transformed much of central Athens from a traffic-ridden horror to a delight enjoyed by visitors and Athenians alike.

At the middle of the park is the Acropolis, a group of structures set at the peak of a high hill -- its name, in fact, means "the top of the city"). People began living on the defensible site as early as 5000 B.C., and by classical times it had become the city's religious center. Today, when you peer over the sides of the Acropolis at the houses in the Plaka district and the remains of the Ancient Agora (once the city's civic and business center) and the theater of Dionysos (part of its cultural center), you're basically looking at the layout of the ancient city.

The Acropolis's most striking and important structure is the world-famous Parthenon, a temple to the goddess Athena built in the 5th century B.C. The necessities of preservation mean that visitors aren't allowed inside, so you'll have to content yourself with a view of the outside and its 46 columns and wealth of carved art. The structure's roof is long gone, but hasn't been for as long as you might think: It was blown to smithereens in 1687 during fighting between the Venetians and Turks.

At the base of the Acropolis's southeastern slope, about 300m (985 ft.) from the Parthenon, the strikingly contemporary New Acropolis Museum was built to house every antiquity recovered during centuries of archaeological digs on the Acropolis site -- some 4,000 of them (including numerous pieces uncovered during excavation of the museum's own foundations), spread out among 14,000 square meters of exhibition space. The museum's design includes a huge glass gallery intended to house the famous Elgin Marbles (aka the Parthenon Marbles), which were removed from the site in 1806 by Britain's Lord Elgin and installed at the British Museum. The sculptures are still firmly ensconced in London, but if they ever are returned to Athens, the new gallery will display them in their original arrangement, in climate-controlled conditions.

Also below the Acropolis you'll find the Ancient Agora, a jumble of buildings, inscriptions, and sculpture fragments that once served as Athens's political and commercial center. Socrates often strolled here with his disciples, including Plato, and drank his cup of hemlock in a prison at the Agora's southwest corner.

Admission to the Acropolis complex costs 12€ ($16).

Close by, Hadrian's Arch looks like what it is: a Roman arch topped with ornamental Greek columns. It was built around A.D. 131 as a gate between the older section of Athens and a new quarter created by the Roman emperor Hadrian. Hadrian was also responsible for completion of the nearby Olympieion temple, which at 108m long and 43m wide (354 ft./141 ft.) was one of the largest temples in the ancient world.