... is the Acropolis. This is the view from the roof of our hotel. The word Acropolis means "city on the edge," and the name was once appropriate because it was once a working city. In fact, people lived on the hill as far back as the stone age, and it remained a good place to live because it was easily defensible and had a couple natural springs. The city flourished for thousands of years, but in Hellenistic times the hill was considered to be sacred, so building houses on it was forbidden. Pericles commissioned a number of structures to be built on it, including the Parthenon.

Same thing, but at night. They got a French expert on lighting monuments (apply for your Doctorate of Monument Lighting today!) and he really did a stellar job.

This is the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, which is right next to the Acropolis. It's Roman, built in AD 161. So, not very old.

It's a rather well-preserved theatre. Though it is only Roman.

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Looking out over it, that hill in the distance is Filopappou Hill, which has a monument on the top. It's Roman, so it's practically new.

Andrea at the Acropolis. And there's a creepy guy, too.

Athens has a surprising number of stray dogs and cats. The dogs were generally big and friendly mutts, and seemed to spend much of their time sleeping in the sun. The cats ... well, they were not only common in Athens but also throughout Greece, and to avoid having half these photos be of cats I have given them their own page.

Along with the Parthenon, Pericles commissioned a grand gate to the top of the Acropolis, the Propylaia. This is it. As you can see, it's crowded. So many people visit the Acropolis that the stone ground is smooth to the point of being polished and slippery.

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The Propylaia is also undergoing renovations. The present philosophy behind upkeep seems to involve replacing damaged and missing stone, which seems to be going well.

They're doing it to the Parthenon as well. The stone is pentelic marble, which is quarried on the nearby Mount Pentelicus and is the same stone the ancient Athenians used to build the structures.

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The Parthenon originally contained a massive gold statue of Athena and the stone above the columns was decorated with a long frieze. The statue is long gone. The frieze was taken by Lord Elgin in the nineteenth century and is now in the British Museum (I actually have a photo of us there).

The roof of the Parthenon was actually in great shape until the Turks decided to store gunpowder in it and had an accident.

But of course, building damage caused by accidents can be repaired, and they don't seem to be running out of pentelic marble.

One of the other remaining buildings is the Erechtheion. It's famous for its porch of the maidens. Lord Elgin took one of the maidens, and the other five are in the shiny new Acropolis Museum (which was not yet open when we visited). These statues are replicas.

Legend has it that Athena gave the olive tree as a gift to humanity, as the olive os so useful it must have come from the gods. This olive tree at the Erechtheion was like many we saw throughout Greece. They're almost as plentiful as the cats.

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A view of the distant Lykavittos Hill behind the Erechtheion (about which more below).

It was a very, very bright day, and the sky was a pretty blue that I enhanced with a polarizing filter. The Erechtheion's marble looked great in the sunlight.

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Here we are with some random kids at the Erechtheion.

And without them.

The roof of part of the north porch was still in good condition.

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There is a lot of building equipment on the Acropolis, like these rails used to move stone ...

... and this massive crane, one of two that sat next to the hill.

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The Theatre of Dionysus next to the Acropolis is not as well preserved as the Odeon.

This is where the bigwigs sat.

Happy little trees near the ancient agora, or public space, an area filled with meeting buildings, squares, monuments, theatres, temples and shrines. The word agoraphobia (an anxiety disorder often characterized by the fear of public places) comes from the word acora.

Surplus columns of some of the agora's old buildings.

This is the showpiece of the agora, the Temple of Hephaestus, one of the best preserved temples of its kind. It was built at around the same time as the buildings presently on the Acropolis, then later was a Greek Orthodox church and then a museum.

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One of the types of buildings in the agora was a stoa, a covered walkway or portico. The Stoa of Attalos was one of the largest, and it was reconstructed in the mid-twentieth century. It is regarded as a faithful reconstruction, aside from the fact that the pentelic marble is still white (the ancient Greeks actually painted much of their buildings and statuary in bright colors). The columns on the ground floor are of the Doric order, and the upper floor's columns are Ionic.

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There's a museum in the Stoa of Attalos with quite a lot of fascinating artifacts, such as Greek coins, weapons and funerary materials. This is a stone used to assign jury duty.

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A bit to the east is the Roman Agora, which was built much later - practically yesterday, since it's only Roman. One fantastic building in the Roman Agora is the Temple of the Winds, which was a solar clock, a weather vane and planetarium. It's in remarkable condition, though the weather vane fell of years ago.

The friezes on the outside of the octagonal temple are great, and represent the eight winds.

We walked through the Plaka, or the old Turkish district, to the Temple of Olympian Zeus, which was one of the biggest temples anywhere. In front of it the Roman Emperor Hadrian (famous for his wall in northern England) built an arch. Hadrian loved Athens, and built quite a few things here.

Here's the Temple of Olympian Zeus. Its columns are massive. Only a corner of it, and a few scattered bits, remain.

I can't emphasize how tall these are.

The right column here fell in the nineteenth century. It was knocked down by wind.

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The moon over the Temple of Olympian Zeus.

Looking back along the temple at the distant Acropolis.

We walked through the National Gardens and found this rather nice building, which was closing for the night. It's the Zappeio Palace, and the people working in it were nice enough to let us wander around.

It has a wonderful round atrium that is open to the sky and lined with a two-storey portico. I couldn't get over the color of the sky - it looked like the dome in a planetarium.

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In Syntagma Square, one of the major public spaces in modern Athens, we found the Greek Parliament.

Nice museum space, isn't it? Well, it isn't a museum.

It's a tube station. Believe it or not, a lot of Athens' modern underground stations feature artifacts discovered while digging to build them. The layers of history discovered in the making of this system are extraordinary. It doesn't seem to be slowing them down, as they are continuing to expand the lines.

This is Lykavittos Hill. We saw it from the Acropolis, and at the end of our trip through Greece we stayed at a hotel quite near it. Its name reflects the belief that it used to be inhabited by wolves.

Looking back at the Acropolis from the top of the hill.

It had a decent view of the Panathenaic Stadium, which was rebuilt in the nineteenth century and was used in the Olympics.

These are agave stalks. The agave is a short plant that produces a long stalk, and they are all over Greece, particularly near the sea. They're originally from Mexico, where they are used to make tequila.

A lottery ticket salesman in a cafe near Lykavittos Hill. We enjoyed the area south of the hill, as it was full of businesspeople having coffee and enjoying the city.

In particular we liked the freshly squeezed orange juice. It's available all over Greece, always made from local oranges (or almost always - I didn't see many orange trees in central Athens).