City guide · Αθήνα Athens

Athens

Birthplace of democracy: the Acropolis, the Parthenon and the Acropolis Museum

Foto: Thomas Wolf, www.foto-tw.de · CC BY-SA 3.0 de

Athens has been inhabited for at least five thousand years. The Parthenon on the Acropolis looks down over the city, the Acropolis Museum at its foot holds the sculptures from the hill, and the Ancient Agora and the old Plaka district are all within walking distance.

History

Los orígenes de la ciudad

Around 1400 BC Athens was already an important Mycenaean centre with a fortress on the Acropolis. In 508 BC Cleisthenes' reforms laid the foundations of democracy; in the 'Golden Age' that followed, Pericles oversaw the building of the Acropolis complex including the Parthenon, and Aeschylus, Sophocles, Socrates and Plato all lived in Athens at this time. In the Roman period Athens was a revered centre of learning; it was taken by the Ottoman Empire in 1458. In 1687 Venetian forces shelled the Acropolis and gunpowder stored in the Parthenon exploded, leaving the temple as we see it today. After Greek independence Athens became the capital in 1834, then a small town of about 4,000 people at the foot of the Acropolis. Athens hosted the first modern Olympic Games in 1896 and the Olympics again in 2004.

c. 1400 BCAn important Mycenaean centre with a fortress on the Acropolis
508 BCCleisthenes' reforms laid the foundations of Athenian democracy
447 BCWork began on the Parthenon
1458The Ottoman Empire captured Athens
1687Venetian forces shelled the Acropolis and gunpowder exploded in the Parthenon
1834Became capital of independent Greece
1896Hosted the first modern Olympic Games

Stories

Historias de la ciudad

Historia · The Acropolis of Athens

Pericles' Acropolis

In the golden age of 5th-century BC Athens, Pericles used the treasury of the Delian League to fund the building of the Acropolis complex. The Parthenon was begun in 447 BC and largely completed in 438 BC, with decoration continuing until 432 BC; the whole project was supervised by Phidias, whose own gold-and-ivory statue of Athena stood in the temple's inner chamber. More than two thousand years later, in 1687, a Venetian army bombarded the Acropolis, and gunpowder the Ottomans had stored in the temple was hit and exploded, badly damaging the temple and leaving it roughly as it is today.

Leyenda · The Acropolis of Athens

Athena and Poseidon compete for Athens

In myth, Athena, goddess of wisdom, and Poseidon, god of the sea, competed to be the city's protector. According to the ancient geographer Pausanias, the sculptures of the Parthenon's west pediment depicted this contest; the area of the neighbouring Erechtheion is said to have held Athena's sacred olive tree, and the temple honoured both Athena and Poseidon.

Historia · Acropolis Museum

A gallery waiting for its sculptures to come home

Between 1801 and 1812, agents of the 7th Earl of Elgin removed about half of the Parthenon's surviving sculptures and shipped them to Britain, where they later entered the British Museum as the 'Elgin Marbles'. Elgin claimed the removal had the permission of Ottoman officials, but its legality is still disputed. When Greece asked for their return, it was told there was 'no suitable place to display them'; the top-floor gallery of the Acropolis Museum, opened in 2009, was built to match the temple's column spacing.

People