Acropolis and Its New Museum

The other day, my son and I went to the Acropolis and the new Museum at its foothill in Athens, Greece. The Museum was open in 2009 to house the collection of artifacts found at different times on the Acropolis Hill. On its own, the building is a masterpiece in architectural design not only because it has a great flow for following the history and evolution of Greek culture through the centuries as they were buried and found on the Acropolis, but also because it has a full-size replica of the Parthenon on the upper floor.

When I got to that floor, I was struck by the size and magnificence of it. In particular, I was awed by the view of the real Parthenon up on the hill opening up from the replica. The cover photo was my humble attempt to capture that magnificence and magnitude, but then something of that size is involved it is really hard to render both the scale and meaning of it. Still, I believe this is one of the coolest pictures I've ever taken.

I tried to take a picture of the longer side of the replica but unfortunately it came out blurry (kinda artsy, too). I didn't notice it with my failing eyes when I was taking it, only when I started to write this story. You can see that the museum staff arranged the Parthenon reliefs exactly the way they would have been on the original building, with missing pieces for the parts that have never been found.

This is a better picture, to give a perspective of how long the Parthenon front wall is. To the right of the steel column in the middle representing the Parthenon columns (the others are lined up exactly behind it), you can see the fragments of the friezes.

While we were looking at the copies of the friezes' statues (the most beautiful and significant ones are in the British Museum, smuggled out by Lord Elgin between 1801 and 1805 with the permission of the Ottoman Empire authorities that ruled Greece at the time), we've overheard a very interesting conversation between a museum visitor, an Eastern European woman in her 40s and one of the museum guards:

"Excuse me, what does 'BM' mean next to these statues?" the woman asked.

"It means that they are in the British Museum and we only have their copies."

"Really? So all of them?"

"The ones that have the BM in brackets, see this one is at the British Museum, this one, and this one," the guard was becoming a little aggravated.

"How did they end up there?" the woman asked.

"Ask the pillagers," I couldn't help inserting myself into the conversation.

The guard looked at me with gratitude, "Thank you, we are not allowed to say that."

The woman didn't know anything about Lord Elgin, so the guard, my son and I gave her a little history lesson.

"Don't you want them back?" she asked the guard naively.

"That's a billion-dollar question," he said and moved away to usher people to the exit.

"You might find reading about this centuries-long controversy interesting," I added, trying to avoid sounding condescending and also moved to the exist as the museum would be closing in 15 minutes.

Earlier in the day, we visited the Acropolis, taking in its history and significance. I’m glad we did it before going to the museum as the museum gave it more meaning.

Here's is a view of the Parthenon's main entrance. It needs to be propped up and reinforced against the elements all the time. But it is still a magnificent building, even with all the supporting steel structures.

I particularly like this picture of Erechtheion (Temple of Athena Polias) on the Acropolis. We were blessed with sunny but windy weather and I loved the way the sky came out here.

Another absolutely magnificent structure on the Acropolis is Herodion, (full name - Odeon of Herodes Atticus, built in 161 AD), is arguably the oldest performance venue in the world. It's absolutely magnificent and I would love to attend a concert in it. One of the latest ones performed there was Coldplay in 2024.

Here's a side picture of Herodion I took in the evening, after we were done with our museum explorations (sun sets around 5:30 pm here these days).

It was obviously closed, so I had to take a picture through the gate bars. I can only imagine what a performer would feel standing in front of the audience in this magnificent venue.

And finally, a picture of Athens at night from the Acropolis hill. Isn't the city beautiful? I guess any city looks beautiful at night with all sorts of colors in the illumination, but I really like this one.

Thanks for taking this photo trip with me!