Son of a Sailor

There are several major museums in Athens: The National Archaeological Museum and the Acropolis Museum + some others.

The Acropolis Museum is a massive (14,000 square meter) thematic museum* built to house every ancient artifact found throughout the ancient Acropolis in Athens. The actual museum was started in 2003 but opened to the public in 2009. There are now over 4,250 objects housed in the museum….which was actually built over ancient Roman and Byzantium ruins….now clearly visible under the museum and able to be toured. To say this museum is huge is an understatement…it’s worth hours of time for exploration, wonder and awe at what has been found and left for us to think about.

*thematic museum means the entire museum only focuses on one site…..the Acropolis.

The museum is divided into four floors….which my post will roughly cover. First, I want to show you a bit about how the museum was built and how the thousands of heavy statues and stone works made it to the museum….as there’s no roads up to the Acropolis….but all these things had to get down to the museum in one piece.

**First, here’s the museum in the foreground and the Acropolis in the background. That’s a good orientation to start with.** From Google.

In starting the construction and foundations for the museum….workers immediately starting finding the ancient Roman and Byzantium settlement under the present buildings. The Museum either had to destroy it or build over it. From Wikipedia. .

So, yeah….to get all the heavy friezes, statues and other pieces off the Acropolis safely and into the museum….they came up with a unique solution. Cranes carried the pieces off the mountain and right to the museum. From Wikipedia.

**Here’s another view.** From Wikipedia.

**So look carefully at my picture as I was standing in line to get into the museum. That’s the ancient structures under the 1st floor of the museum.**

The Excavation (Base or Ground Level):

We were fortunate to be able to pay a bit extra on our tickets to tour the Excavation on the Ground Level. It was rad! Here we go….the pictures are stunning:

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The Gallery of the Acropolis Slopes:

**Gently sloping upwards, meant to mimic the walk up the slopes of the Acropolis.**

The Caryatids (First Floor Balcony):

Here are five of the six original female-figure support pillars for the Erechtheion’s south porch. The sixth figure is still intact but remains in London. Next Saturday I’ll show you a picture I took of Erechtheion’s south porch and you can see what they look like in support positions.

The Parthenon Gallery (third floor):

**This is a literal magic stone. Named the Magic Sphere of Helios, it was found by workers in 1866 near the Theatre of Dionysos. It is thought to have been used as a magic talisman.**

**Part of the Panathenaic Freize. Most of it exists in this museum but some of the missing parts are in London, taken out of Greece in the 1800’s.**

**How the area around the Acropolis may have looked in ancient times.**

Doesn’t look like as many people as were really there, but when the masses of humanity are very hot and tired….it turns into more people. This is before we even climbed the very steep hill up the Acropolis or saw the Parthenon. To say this area of Athens was crowded is an understatement. Had we not had tickets beforehand, we would not have gotten into much of anything around this area.

This turned into a long day for us travelers. We did the Temple of Poseidon that morning then came straight to the very crowded area around the Acropolis to go to lunch, back to the Acropolis Museum, up the Acropolis with at least 10,000 other people to tour the Parthenon and other sites at the top….then off to a bus tour of Athens and finally onto another Greek dinner. So this was one of our very longest days….but we only had one more day to go after this and then we had a long flight back home.

I had been looking forward to this trip for a very long time, as I’ve never been to many of the places I studied as a kid….and now suddenly I was taking a trip with my kids to all these ancient sites. Despite being tired, hot and grouchy…I was thrilled to be on the trip and be able to share it with my family. We travel as a family and purposely bring you these posts so you can learn, enjoy and perhaps do the same sort of trips with your own family. Thanks for reading!