The Fefes Adventure Collective

With our time abroad ending in about 6 weeks, it seems important to write about some of our favorite Athens spots (see Aristotle’s Lyceum, the Benaki, and the National Historical Museum). The Ancient Agora ranks high on our list, not just because it’s a great outdoor museum where kids can run around and be loud or because of the many turtles roaming the grounds, but because the Greek government has preserved this space so well, you really get a feel for life in ancient Athens.  It also has one of the best preserved temples in all the city.

“Agora” is market.  The verb “αγοραζω” means to buy.  There’s a whole group of nouns in Greek that are based on verbs — it makes things very tidy.  Now, the most common ‘agora’ in Greece is the laiki, but there are other ones (gold for example) advertised here and there.

The Agora has been occupied without interruption since around 3000 BC; first as a residential and burial area and by 600 it became a public area. Its current shape is rectangular, and it’s been this way since the 2nd century BC.  It’s been rebuilt many times after damage by the Persians and then the Romans.  It was gradually abandoned after 580 AD until the 1800s when it again became a residential area.

The Agora was the center of ancient Athens: political, cultural, religious, commercial and social.  It even had a mint.  The most important buildings and temples were built between the 6th and 2nd centuries BC.  The entire area is basically a flat space that sits in front of the Acropolis between the Theiseion and Monasteraki areas (and subway stations). The Panathenaic Way crossed the Agora on its way to the Acropolis from the main gate of the city and the Altar of the Twelve Gods sanctuary marked the heart of Athens: distances to outside places were measured from here.

Representative government was alive and well: there was a circular building that served as the senate headquarters, where bills were drafted for discussion by a larger general Assembly.  If you look up the hill to the northwest, you can see the jail where Socrates was imprisoned and executed.

The Temple of Hephaestus stands on the west side and is one of the best preserved monuments in the entire city. Hephaestus was the god of fire, but also the god and patron of metalworking, stone masonry and sculpture. He was the son of Zeus and Hera and was married to Aphrodite, though Aphrodite cheated on him with Ares.  Hephaestus was the official blacksmith for the gods and made all the weapons for Olympus. Inside the temple were two bronze statues of Hephaestus and Athina. In the 7th century AD, the temple was converted to a church and in the 18th century, many prominent Athenians and statesmen were interred here.

The east side houses the official Agora museum in the Stoa of Attalos, originally built around 150 BC.  It was fully restored thanks to funds from the Rockefeller Foundation in the 1950s.  It’s a perfect building that shows what the stoas looked like and it’s adorned with statues and other artifacts found in the Agora.  The museum is small but quite interesting.  Stoic philosophers were named as such as they held their discussions under the stoa; as opposed to Aristotle’s walking school.

We love this monument so much that we pretty much insist that all of our visitors see it.  It’s right in the heart of the oldest Athens neighborhoods … but it’s also the best example of the ancient Agora in all of Greece and we think just standing there helps you visualize life in those classical times.

My dear friend Allison and her family had plans to travel to Italy this summer, and — bless them — they stopped in Athens first.  It was soooo not on their way. Our visit was way fun and too short, but one of the sightseeing highlights was Cape Sounio and the temple of Poseidon, the god of the Sea.

This glorious temple was the last thing that the ancient Athenians would see as they sailed off into the Aegean. It’s perched on the cliffs of the southernmost point of the Attica peninsula. It was constructed in late 400s BC, around the same time the Parthenon was constructed and likely by the same architect who designed the Temple of Hephaestus.  Pericles ruled the city and it was the golden age of Athens.  King Menelaus of Sparta is rumored to have stopped here on his way back from Troy.  His sailing companion died en route and Menelaus landed at Sounio to give him a proper funeral.  Archaeological finds date back to the 6th century BC; in fact Herotodus mentions a festival that Athenians used to hold at this Cape.

Sounio is most beautiful at sunset; we went mid-day in between odd heavy rains. The dark grey clouds hovering over the water and surrounding the cape were almost as beautiful and dramatic as a calm sunset. The temple was constructed on the site of the remains of an even older temple, and there’s also a second temple to Athina just around the corner.  During the Peloponnesian War against the Spartans, the site was fortified with towers and walls to keep it from being overtaken by the Spartans.  The fortress was later seized from the Athenians by rebel slaves from nearby Lavrio.

What is super interesting is to learn is that there is a perfect isosceles triangle between the temple at Sounio, the Parthenon and the Temple of Aphaia Athena on Aegina Island, which is visible from Cape Sounio.  Mathematics were a very important part of ancient Athenian life — and geometry ruled the construction of the Parthenon — but this triangle proves that the location of various monuments was based on geometric shapes.  How they figured out these points and distances is hard to imagine, but it sure is fascinating.

We left Sounio for a proper lunch in a traditional taverna in Vouliagmeni — lunch is always a good reason to wait out the rain.  It was our last day together, after two full days in Athens and late nights for food.  We spent the afternoon at the pool at their hotel, though the clouds and rain made it a little too cold to swim. Michael brought a deck of cards so there were a few rounds of go fish and crazy eights.  I kidnapped Allison her final morning for a walk reminiscent of our single girl DC days when we’d trek from TC Williams high school down to Old Town Alexandria and back.  They went onto Rome that afternoon.

Heard of the stoic philosophers?  Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus are a few of the most famous ones. The stoics got their name because their schools/sessions took place under the Stoa. Totally understandable; shade is a welcome gift in the Athenian (or Roman) heat.   The stoic school was founded in Athens in 300 BC, about 35 years after Aristotle returned to Athens from Macedonia and founded his peripatetic school of philosophy in Athens. Peripatetic comes from the Greek word for ‘walk,’  and if you visualize Raphael’s School of Athens, with Plato and Aristotle strolling along and debating, you’ve got it.  Aristotle liked to walk and teach.

The Lyceum, the site of Aristotle’s school, was discovered in 1996 in downtown Athens during excavation for what is now Athens’ Museum of Modern Art.  It was found thanks to descriptions from the writings of ancient philosophers — so it wasn’t a total surprise — which described Aristotle’s school as just outside the eastern boundary for ancient Athens.  Archaeologists first uncovered the gymnasium and a wrestling area and then buildings shortly after.  Visitors can see teaching rooms, the remains of a heating system, a reading room, and two rooms for the athletes to oil and powder their bodies.  Naturally, museum construction plans were altered so that the art museum could be built with the outdoor Lyceum museum right next to it, and it opened in 2009. They both sit right next to the Byzantine Museum, which has one of the prettiest outdoor coffee shops in all of Athens.

Aristotle modeled his structure after those of Plato’s Academy, the remains of which lie on the opposite-ish side of the ancient Athens border. Lessons for the ‘advanced’ students would take place during the early morning walk, while more beginner lessons happened during an evening walk.  Philosophy happened in the morning; rhetoric in the afternoon.  Aristotle taught here until 323 BC.

The Lyceum is beautiful, especially in the Spring.  The grounds that surround it are so well landscaped that it really is one of the most lovely spaces in the city of Athens. Demetri and I first visited at the end of May when the Spring flowers were in full bloom.  The photo above is from that day.  Then the Fisackerlys visited it last week on their Athens trip and in our quest to find them we walked in quickly too.  We returned yesterday with Ms. Scala, the head of Aspen Academy, and her son. It was considerably hotter than that April day, but the planting beds, filled with rosemary, lavender, oregano, thyme, and olive and pomegranate trees,  were thriving in spite of the heat.  The space itself is some 12,000 square meters and there’s a lovely little section with benches where you can sit and view the entire Lyceum.  In the late afternoon, there’s even a little corner of the benches that have some shade.

Demetri often wonders aloud about what things haven’t been discovered yet in this vast city of antiquities.  The Lyceum is a perfect example: if it wasn’t found until 20 years ago, what other astonishing treasures lie beneath the streets?