Athens has many museums. The two we gave most attention to were the Acropolis Museum and the National Archaelogical Museum because those encapsulate what makes Athens and Greece really important in world history. Between them, they house an unparalleled collection of archaelogical artifacts ranging from prehistory to late antiquity, and almost all of them were collected from places within a 250km radius.
The imposing main entry to the Acropolis Museum. The Weiler Building, left, is the museum's research centre. [6841]The Acropolis Museum (A.M.) understandably focuses on archeological matter from the Acropolis. The current building, just south of its namesake, is new, having been opened in 2009, the old museum was on the hill. The new A.M. is a beautiful concrete and glass edifice, rather uncharacteristic of most of Athens, with its main entrance facing the Acropolis. It stands beside the Akropoli metro station, but its an easy walk there from The Dolli, less than a kilometer. The design of the museum is so as to replicate many features of Parthenon. For example: "the spacing of the columns of the Parthenon hall is the same as that of the ancient temple and the use of glass walls on all four exterior walls allows the natural light to illuminate the Parthenon marbles as they do on the ancient temple . . . the pediments, metopes* and frieze are displayed facing outwards, as they did on Parthenon Wikipedia. Looking out of the museum to the north provides an easy view of the Parthenon, only 280m away.[ A metope is a square space between triglyphs in a Doric frieze. ]
Looking towards the Acropolis from the A.M. [6826]The collection at the A.M. is collectively stunning with statuary and friezes that the British didn't manage to steal early in the 19th Century on display in a spacious and magnificent setting over multiple floors and with excellent interpretative signage in Greek and English. QR codes open audio interpretations of the various exhibits. It would take a long time to absorb everything this magnificent museum has to offer. We only spent three hours there, but in that time we noted that the emphasis is on the artwork and not so much on the culture which produced it. The A.M. replaced a 1874 museum atop the Acropolis, vastly inadequate for the volume of antiquities found on the site, even after a 1950's expansion.
Impressive and crowded entry to the exhibitions at the Acropolis Museum. [6807]
Herakles (son of Zeus and Alkmene) fighting the sea demon Triton (son of Posiedon and Amphrite) , 570BC, reconstructed fragments of a limestone sculpture found near the Parthenon in 1882. [6809]
Model of the Acropolis from the south, at some point in time. The Odeum of Herodes Atticus is the theatre on the left. [6812]
Showing how fragments of a statue are reassembled to give a better idea of the whole original. [6818]
Tiny fraction of the frieze on the Parthenon. [6822]
Tiny fraction of the frieze on the Parthenon. [6828]
Once the crown on the ridge of the Parthenon pediment, this amazing 4m tall ornament has been reconstructed (1990) in plaster with but a few original fragments. [6830]Most interestingly (and controversially), the A.M. has been built over the top of multiple layers of ancient Roman and Byzantine villages, featuring closely packed "modest, private roadside houses and workshops" [ Wikipedia ]. A map of the ancient neighbourhood dates layers of houses from 5thC AD through to 8thC AD, a span of 1300 years, and shows "streets, residences, workshops and tombs". The village, now referred to as the Makrygiannis Plot, extends way beyond the bounds of the A.M., and excavated parts of it were removed to make way for the next-door Akropoli metro station. The museum is built on pillars, so you can wander through these excavations below the museum. The pillars are positioned to minimise damage to the excavations. Sections of the ground floor of the A.M. have glass floors so these excavations can be seen. Rather by grand coincidence, we visited the museum on 26 June, apparently the very day that the excavations part of the museum was first opened. Usually, we don't manage such luck.
The massive basement excavations underneath the Acropolis Museum. [6835]
Tiny part of the excavated houses underneath the Acropolis Museum. [6805]
A water cistern in a courtyard of a private house excavated and now underneath the Acropolis Museum. [6837]
Evidence of intricate plumbing, thousands of years old, in the village now under the Acropolis Museum. [6838]We had heard that queues were long to visit the A.M, so we had prepared ourselves for a long wait. It didn't happen. There was a long queue, but that turned out to be a large tour group (big enough to be off a cruise ship) awaiting bulk admission. No signage to help, and no facilitators outside the building, we bypassed that group and found that the "walk-ins" ticketing area was queue-less, and we went straight in. Don't rely on helpful signage in Athens! After our visit, we bought cool drinks from a part open-air cafe in the museum. Table service was good, but it was windy and light-weight things like napkins were blowing around everywhere.
Entrance to the Acropolis Museum. Luckily, we discovered that we could bypass that queue. [6806]The splendid neo-classical National Archaelogical Museum (N.A.M.) building in Exarcheion was completed in 1889, and it is presently enjoying an underground extension which is due to open in 2028. The N.A.M. features exhibits from all over Greece, from neolithic times with a possible emphasis on the Classical period around 400BC. According to the Greek Ministry of Culture and Sports, it is "one of the world's great museums" (http://odysseus.culture.gr/h/1/eh151.jsp?obj_id=3249), and we believe it. It's divided into logical sections, including Santorini where frescos from Akroteri (see our previous blog) are exhibited. It was to see these that mostly prompted our visit to the N.A.M., and we were not disappointed.
The magnificent facade of the National Archaeological Museum. [9125]
Large exhibition hall in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. [9153]The frescos are splendid, and they have been mounted as they were arranged in the excavations at Akroteri. Their almost perfect preservation is attributed to their burial in volcanic ash. Colouration was sophisticated, using mineral oxides of iron for red, yellow ochre, copper pyrites, alumino silicates (lime) for blue. The boxing children fresco depicts two naked boys with shaved heads wearing belts and boxing gloves. Found in the same room was the antelopes fresco of which there were several.
Reconstruction of a room from Akroteri, the boxing children and antelopes frescos. [9137]
Gilded bronze weapon. [9128]
In ancient Greek scuptures, warriors are depicted naked but that's probably not how they appeared in battle. [9130]
Pottery from 5thC BC depicting chariot racing. [9151]
The N.A.M. bronze statuary collection includes this one from the Classical Period (5-4thC BC). It's fantastic that such old and fragile artworks have survived, even if armless. [9154]
In the basement cafe of the National Archaeological Museum, this mozaic floor from Piraeus (100's AD), depicting mythical Medusa with snakes for hair. Medusa was thought to repel evil. [9156]
Gold elliptical funeral crowns from 'Grave Circle A', a 16thC BC bronze age cemetery in Mycenae, in the N.A.M's prehistoric collection. [9160]
A garden of famous men in the National Archaeological Museum. [9164]
Three gods sculpted in Parian marble (100BC) and found on Delos, goat-footed Pan is making sexual advances on Aphrodite who is defending herself with a sandal with the winged Eros coming to her aid. [9165]
Larger than life Poseidon, god of the sea but missing his trident, statue in Parian marble found on Milos (about 100BC). [9167]It was a hellishly hot day for our visit to the N.A.M., so we caught the Metro even though it's less than 2km from The Dolli. We were suffering after our visit and taxi'd home, and this became a very disappointing experience. The driver of the only taxi in sight was a crook, did not use a meter and overcharged us multiple times over. If we weren't so overcome with exhaustion, we might/should have photographed the driver, his credentials and the cab's license plate. Not great harm done in the end, but this one taxi driver has left us with a very sour taste in our mouths, and has blighted our fond memories of Athens.
What is missing from Athens museums are the Elgin Marbles, a collection of ancient Greek statues "stolen" by one Thomas Bruce, the 7th Earl of Elgin, between 1801 and 1812. Both museums give ample coverage to the story of the Marbles with varying degrees of "politeness". Elgin's Marbles were from the Acropolis, mostly the Partenon, mostly 5th Centure BC sculptures (in marble). Fortunately, Elgin's collection has been well kept in the British Museum, but the story of how they got removed is the subject of long-standing controversy. It is briefly this...
From later ancient times, the Parthenon was already in bad shape due to earthquakes. During one Ottoman-Venetian war (1680's), the occupying Turks unwisely stored gunpowder in the Parthenon, and it was blown up during a Venetian artilliary attack from the adjacent Philopappus Hill. Apart from hundreds of fatalities, most sculptures fell from the various buildings on the Acropolis and were scavenged and looted for 150 years. Around 1801, when Elgin was Britain's ambassador to Turkey, he (without approval) removed sculptures and shipped them at first to Malta later to Britain. Later, an expensive divorce forced Elgin to sell the Marbles to the British government. The proceeds were less than half his sunk costs, but he did show some integrity by declining higher offers including from Napoleon. Elgin would later claim that his removal of the Marbles had been approved by the Sultan, but there was no evidence of that, and many believe he merely paid off local officials. Greece won its independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1830. From 1835 to the present day, Greece has actively sought the return of the Marbles, but to no avail despite wide international support.
The removal of a metope from the Parthenon by Lord Elgin's men. Watercolour 1801 exhibited in the Stoa of Atalos in the Agora Museum. [9275]We would have liked also to visit the National Historical Museum (est. 1882), located in Syntagma in the old Parliament House having moved there in 1960 from what used to be the "House of Poor Girls" amongst other temporary addresses. This museum, true to its name, focuses on history more than artifacts, and mostly covers the modern period from Ottoman and the wars to achieve independence. We got to the front door on a walk from the Monument to the Unknown Solider, but it was closed at the time, and we never came back. Laziness maybe, but we decided that relaxation in the stifling weather was more important, at the time. https://www.nhmuseum.gr/en/about-us/the-national-historical-museum
Athens' National Historical Museum near Syntagma Square. [0125]Greece did not make it into Euro 2024 (the UEFA European Football Championship), having been defeated by Georgia in the preliminaries. But that hadn't diminished national interest in this soccer event. On our first stay in Athens, we found people watching it everywhere on their phones, and restaurants had TVs placed so they can show it live to patrons who were enthusiastic fans. When looking for the entrance to the Acropolis Museum, the security guard we asked for directions was engrossed in a Euro 2024 game, and was bemused when we admitted that we didn't have a favourite team in the competition.
As an aside, we had wondered why so many Greek names end in "os". Just look at the island names in the Cyclades, and the cafe names anywhere. An AI query said that those names "reflects historical linguistic connections and cultural practices", specifically that "...os" implies masculinity in Proto-Indo-European linguistics, and for example, "...poulos" means "son of".
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