Historic Sites to See in Athens

Historic Sites to See in Athens

Athens has been a popular destination for travellers for centuries.  It is the longest inhabited city in Europe, and possibly the world, with populations remaining there for the past 3,000 years. With some of the most spectacular monuments of the ancient world, the city is rich with cultural heritage. Largely due to the city’s hosting of the 2004 Olympic Games, Athens has enjoyed a radical improvement in its infrastructure over past decade, making it all the more accessible for tourists. Bearing in mind that Athens is one of the world’s top destinations for history lovers, here’s four of the best historical sites within the city:

The Parthenon. This huge temple is one of the world’s top ancient sites, dominating the skyline of Athens on its position on the Acropolis. Built in the 5^th century BC, it was used as a treasury and a temple to the goddess Athena. At 228 feet in length and 64 feet in height it is regarded as the finest surviving building of classical Greece. Much of the building was wrecked by during a Venetian attack on the city in 1687, when the Ottoman Empire used the building as a gunpowder magazine. The magazine was hit by a Venetian mortar, and the building was partly destroyed and subsequently looted. Today major restoration work at the site is ongoing.

The Temple of Olympian Zeus. Lying around 500m to the south east of the Acropolis, this huge temple took over half a millennia to complete. While the original structure was the largest in ancient Greece, only around 1/6^th of the original building survives to this day. No one knows exactly what happened to the rest of the structure, although it is assumed that it fell down in an earthquake in the medieval period, and the ruins used for building. Even today, however, the epic columns remain quite breathtaking as a feat of engineering.

Kerameikos. Covering both sides of the Dipylon Gate and the banks of the Eridanos River, this area is famous for being the former ‘potter’s quarter’ of the city and an extensive burial ground. Tombs dating from sub Mycenaean times to late antiquity can be found here, and it also features the ‘demosion sema’, a public burial monument where Pericles honoured those that had died during the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BC). It is an area untouched by mass tourism, and is consequently full of the quiet atmosphere expected at such a solemn site.

The Agora. The old marketplace and civic centre, this was one of the most important parts of ancient Athens, and the focus for commercial and political activity. The area is also known to have been used as a residential area and burial area as early as c. 3000 BC. The site includes a range of ancient buildings, from temples and monuments to ruins of the ancient market. It also has the Agii Apostoli Church, which is one of the oldest surviving Christian churches, dating from the early 11^th century AD.

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