If you're visiting Athens for the first time, there are many things you must see. For me the top one is the Acropolis. It's like you haven't been to London if you haven't seen Big Ben, or Eiffle Tower in Paris or Statue of Liberty in New York. If you're in Athens you cannot not go to the Acropolis even if you have to hike up the hill in the summer.
Acropolis Museum
I read online that before you visit the Acropolis site, you should visit the Acropolis Museum first. The Acropolis Museum is in the centre of Athens city and has a lot of information and artifacts from the actual site. I'm glad I went there first as I got a much better understanding about the Acropolis before seeing it with my own eyes. And more importantly I finally learnt more about the Elgin Marbles, a contentious issue between UK and Greece. I'll tell you more about that in a minute.
The Acropolis Museum has 4 levels (I think). After you go through the turnstiles on the ground level, visitors walk along a gentle slope with lots of artifacts on display on both sides. I'm told the gentle slope is supposed to mimic the walk uphill to the Acropolis. I didn't spend too much time here, I know there was a lot more to see inside.
I went one level up, there were many statues of various kinds, depicting mythical stories. They all date back to two thousand years. Like this lion devouring a poor little calf. Do you notice the lion has both male and female features? There's probably some mythical story behind that.
There was one big area dedicated to the Goddess Athena. Athena, is the most important of all the Greek gods. She was intelligent and wise, the goddess of war and handicraft. Athens was named after her. There were loads and loads of statues of Athena on display, citizens used to make them for her as gifts and to worship her. There were different sizes, styles and state. Most had parts missing due to their age. The nice thing was that the statues were not boxed in and visitors were free to touch them. Sadly no photographs were allowed due to copyright issues.
This statue was at the very far end of the exhibition, I think it was out of the no photo boundary...
I continued around the museum. The crowd downstairs at the entrance was building up by now.
The caryatids at the Erechtheion
In ancient Greek, caryatids are columns sculpted as females statues and are used to support porches built on top of their heads. These ones here came from the Erechtheion, one of the buildings at the Acropolis site. These caryatids are important, not only because they date back to 400 BC, but also because there are six in total. Five of them, or rather four and 3/4 are located in the Acropolis Museum here. The sixth one is in the British Museum in London. They are part of the Elgin Marbles controversy I mentioned earlier on.
Elgin Marbles controversy
Athens was conquered by the Ottoman in the 15th century for nearly four centuries. During this period, the Parthenon, the main temple at the Acropolis was converted to a mosque, and then used to store gunpowder, resulting in it being badly damaged in various wars. Basically the Parthenon, and other buildings at the Acropolis were falling to pieces, a far downfall from its glory heydays when built over two thousand years ago.
Lord Elgin was Britain's ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in the early 19th century, and an art lover. He wanted to preserve what remains of the Parthenon as much as he could, and got permission from the Ottoman Empire in 1801 to remove some pieces to protect them from further damage. Elgin shipped many pieces back to UK and eventually sold them to the British government. They are now one of the most important displays at the British Museum.
So far so good. Except after Greece gained independence in 1835, they wanted the marbles back. The Parthenon is one of the, if not the most important buildings in Greece and only half of it was left in Athens. The Brits refused of course, and there is an ongoing to and fro between the two countries over this issue.
The Parthenon moves indoors
As the tug of war continues, many of the remaining pieces at the Acropolis site have been moved safely indoors to the Acropolis Museum. I'm sure this isn't to prevent more looting from the Brits 😅. These are valuable pieces of history, and there are a lot of people who would love to get their hands on some. Such as this beautiful piece of floral ornament that used to sit on the top front of the Parthenon.
I like how the marble pieces are displayed in the museum - they're in the same position as if they were on the Parthenon. It gives visitors a view of how they would have looked in real life. These pieces go around the sides of the building, you can see how far down it stretches, and how big the Parthenon is.
Sadly I don't think any of the pieces are intact now. Some are replaced with plaster parts if they know what the original looks like eg if they're located in the British Museum. You can see the shoulder and arms here are smoother and a different colour, that's the plaster. The torso is the original part in marble, rustic and full of history.
And here, the foot is a replacement. If you zoom in on the photo you'll see it says "a fragment in BM". It probably hurts the museum too much to spell out the obvious (sorry to my Greek friends), but to be fair we weren't the only ones. I saw some parts were in other European museums, it's just that the Brits got hold of a lot more.
Watch the video
The other thing I highly recommend doing at the museum is to watch the video about the Acropolis site and the Parthenon. It's not very long and gives a very good summary about everything. It's highly likely you missed information when walking around yourself. Watching the video puts a wrapper around everything.
Now armed with a lot more knowledge and background of this important historical site, I am ready to go see it for real. It's not far away from the museum. You can catch a glimpse of it from the terrace on the second floor.
I was going to go there directly on this post, but talking about the Acropolis Museum alone was a post in itself. You'll have to wait for my next post. Stay tuned.
