Wasn’t that the title of some tedious television series about pizza delivery, or am I thinking of West Wing?
We visited twenty-five (25) museums and twenty-one (21) archaeological sites in our two week whirlwind, and along the way we saw many other archaeological sites in passing. I eschewed anything Roman, including the works of that most Greek of Romans, Hadrian. In addition, we did retail, including museum shops, restaurants and coffee shops. I am commenting on each in turn, in alphabetical order. There will some overlap because the Acropolis has several sites and two museums associated with it. I will start with the sites.
First is best, the Acropolis. Even today it dominates the city, though it is not visible from everywhere, there are sight lines along the major avenues even at some distance. It is obvious that in the classical age it was like a cathedral that overshadowed all else. There are so many photographs and web sites, I can add little to that. http://odysseus.culture.gr/h/3/eh351.jsp?obj_id=2384
My first glimpse of the Acropolis as we set out to go to the site of Plato’s Academy.
On that more later.
We were there in the second week of October, toward the end of the tourist season and still it was crowded. The entry fee is twelve euros and it includes all the sites of the Acropolis incluidng the Kerameikos; a good deal, I thought.
The whole experience is far from spiritual. Once we entered the site there was a throng with many snappers trying to take pictures of this and that.
A great many snappers seemed to be transfixed by the vista from the heights. The vista was of suburban buildings stretching off in the distance, which seemed of more interest to a good portion of my fellow tourists than the sights before them. The steps up were steep and, being marble, slippery even on a bone dry day and worn. There are no handrails or rubber mats to help so I am again glad we went now while we could still cope with these conditions. Moreover, many of the steps and all of the surface were covered in scree from the continual building work and weathering of the ruins, so one was always slipping and sliding a little on the uneven and broken surface at the top.
The top is partly man-made, I now realize. We circumnavigated the Acropolis more than once, and the south face shows extensive support and fill. My guess is that up to 15% or more of the flat surface on the top was made by building support walls and then filling in. There are the remains of four major buildings, including the most major of all the Parthenon, and two gates which themselves were buildings. There is no entry to any of them. In addition, there is a museum which was closed in preparation for the move to the New Acropolis Museum. I did photograph the owl at the door.
The scale of undertaking to build all those buildings on this site remains impressive. Given how difficult the task of renovation has been, I doubt that construction was any easier. Recently the Greek government has relented on its strict rule of no access for film companies and permitted the site to be used by license to generate some income. One film was in progress where we were there and I snapped a picture that might almost invoke the past.
Pericles might have said what Jack Kennedy did of the Apollo project, we choose to do this, not because it is easy, but because it is hard. It must have been hard building those glorious buildings on that mesa.
We are so used to seeing the sere, weathered ruins that we may not realize what they would have looked like in their day. Everything would have been painted, decorated, and adorned. It was common to stick feathers and animal fur on to give texture on the capitols if not the columns, and so on. To stand atop the Acropolis in Pericles’s day would have been like a trip to Disneyland, very stimulating to the senses. I am just glad to have seen the replica in Nashville (see August 2007) to have an idea what the real thing might have looked like.
The ghost of Lord Elgin is with us and I will say something about all of that in due course, but not now.