This somewhat exaggerates the amount of vegetation in central Athens, but the city does have some good "islands" of green. (maps.google.com will of course give you good satellite photos, but you should also know about wikimapia.org. They use the Google maps, but overlay them with information about what you are seeing. I haven't found a way to turn off the roads overlay, and for Athens, there are Too Many roads drawn in! But Wikimapia remains an excellent planning tool; it was extremely helpful to me in planning both my Athens and my Istanbul time. (Be sure to play with the settings options at both sites.)
There's a small saddle in the hill between the Acropolis and the exposed rocks on the left. The heart of ancient Athens is to your left, to the north-west of the Acropolis.
The exposed rocks, called the Areopagus, are something of a natural pulpit, facing north. People believe that St Paul preached from there.
This view above is from the Pnyx, looking east. The scaffolding you see front and center is the same scaffolding as appears in the photo on the link from the main Athens photos page. The entrance to the Acropolis is, and has always has been, from this end of the outcrop. If you look closely, you can see people working their way up the steps in the middle of the gateway (Propylaea), which is the rather plain looking... in this photo... section of stone between the columns of the Erechtheum on the left, and the columns of the Parthenon on the right. The following deep link into Wikimapia may open up a helpful map for you. If it does, the picture above was taken from a spot to the left of the map. http://tinyurl.com/tkbAcrop. (Let me know how well that works, please? It will at least open in a new window or tab, so you can get back to my pictures easily. Lucky you! (You have set your browser to switch to newly opened tabs, haven't you? (Firefox: Tools|Options|Tabs: "When I open... switch... immediately.") While we're on the subject of tabs (use them), if you carefully click on a link, using your mouse's wheel... without rotating the wheel... you open the link in a new tab. Didn't know the wheel was a button... or did you?
I call this my "Turner Acropolis". View from my hotel room's patio. (I stayed at the Magna Grecia, and no, it wasn't a 5 star extravagance. Very nice hotel, but I didn't pay what you might imagine from the view.)
A friend told me that when she visited in the late 60's the sites were disappointing due to weedy shrubs run wild, and poor "restoration". Someone seems to have noticed, and found money: Everywhere I went, the weeds were under control, and the sites were tidy. At the Acropolis, there was a major programme underway to restore the buildings. I spent scores of fascinated minutes watching various stone masons at work. Parts are well along, others are clearly in a "shored up, awaiting their turn, but not deteriorating in the meantime" state, and a few places seem mostly finished, and excite the imagination as to what the site will look like when the work is done. What a worthwhile enterprise!! Tax euros, dollars, etc, going on something good. (Admission fee to site quite reasonable, considering the work being done.)
(In case you need to know: Yes, the pediment photo has been flipped horizontally.)
I'm not going to go too far into the whole Elgin Marbles debate... but that horse has a twin at the British museum, I believe. Will Greece, I wonder, return, say, the Egyptian mummies in its museums to Egypt if Britain returns the Elgin Marbles? On the other hand, maybe "the decent thing to do" would be for Britain to make a gift of good replicas, to adorn the facade of the rebuilt Parthenon? No one, after all, is going to put the originals back up outside in all weathers, are they? If the Marbles were returned to Athens, they would sit in a museum there, as opposed to in a museum in London. The circumstances of their removal from Greece does no one any credit, but.... And I said I wasn't going to go far into the debate....
Click here for Athens main page
© TK Boyd 11/09. Click here to contact him.