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|  | Overlooking the city, the Acropolis is where Athens began. Climbing its steps, it's easy to imagine people back in 500 B.C. coming to worship their gods at the Parthenon.
"Sacred Rock"
Pericles conceived the greatest masterpieces of Greek art, beginning with the Parthenon. Despite being partially destroyed during the 17th-century Venetian siege, it remains an architectural jewel. In the Temple of Athena Nike, admire the sculpted balustrade depicting the goddess.
The Acropolis Museum
Visiting the Acropolis is incomplete without a stop here: it houses sculptures and friezes from the temples as well as the treasures the Persians pillaged and buried in the 5th century B.C. and which were later found during 19th-century digs. |
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| | Theatres of antiquity
Make sure you see the Theatre of Dionysos on the south slope. Sophocles and Euripides presented their works here, thus making it a symbol of classical drama. The nearby Odeon of Herod Atticus is still used today, hosting the Athens Festival every summer.
Anafiotika
Wander around this old neighborhood which, with its narrow streets and blue-shuttered white houses, resembles a Cycladic village. Not so strange since, in the 19th century, Othon I called on the country's best builders, inhabitants of Anafi in the Cyclades, to build his palace. They took advantage of their job to replicate their home village at the foot of the Acropolis. |
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