Acropolis Archaeological Museum Guide
Today, we’re at the Acropolis Archaeological Museum, and this place is going to blow you away. There are more than 3,000 artifacts from the Acropolis here...and exactly 0 of them are the Parthenon marbles. Let's go take a walk in ancient history and talk about it.
The Modern Attraction of Athens
The museum is relatively new to the city of Athens, particularly when you consider how old the city of Athens actually is, having opened in 2009. Millions of people have visited here since it opened its doors and today, we're going to be with them.
You'll notice the massive size of the museum right away. The design is very open and airy, so everything feels very wide open and roomy and really, it's just very Greek. It has that open design we're so used to seeing with ancient Greek architecture and there's natural light everywhere.
The museum is full of windows, which is actually unusual. Many museums don't have a lot of natural light because the sun can affect artifacts. It makes fabrics fade, it washes the colors out of paintings, it can cause a lot of trouble. So the Acropolis museum has filters on all the windows to block the harmful rays that can cause all this damage, while still providing light for the entire museum.
Another super cool feature of the design of this museum is what you can see when you look out of the windows. From most of the windows inside the museum, when you look out of them you will see the Acropolis. The museum is full of items that were once up here, so there you go. This is why the Greeks are famous for their design style, dating back to a time when everyone in Europe was still building stuff out of mud and straw. I'm just saying.
The result is big, huge rooms full of sunlight and massive marble statues, because that's the kind of stuff that's on display here. And frankly, it's totally incredible. It's a really beautiful museum and it's full of ancient Greek art, so everything on display here is totally gasp-worthy as well.
Museum Walkthrough
You'll walk right into the oldest gallery in the museum from the ground floor. This is an area of the museum where photography is not allowed. It's where the oldest items are located, so a lot of statues, pieces of buildings, columns, items that date back thousands of years.
Every other part of the museum allows photography and the museum is very easy to navigate. One area pretty much leads right into the next, so you won't have trouble finding your way around.
You will start to advance in time as you advance through the museum. Items from antiquity are right past the lobby. When you go up to the first level of the museum, you'll see items from Iron Age Greece. As you go up, you will see one of the most famous features of the Acropolis being displayed right there in the main stairwell.
Porch of the Caryatids
This is the real Porch of the Caryatids. The one currently on the Acropolis is a replica. The real one is the museum where it can be kept safe, and that's a good thing. This is one of the most famous buildings from the Acropolis and it's actually tied to a lot of mythology and history for the city of Athens. In a strange way, the story of this famous artifact actually continues to unfold to this day.
The female statues are acting as pillars, holding up the porch on one of the large buildings on the Acropolis. According to legend, these women lived in Caryae, a Greek city-state that sided with the Persians against Athens in the Greco-Persian War.
Because Caryae was disloyal to its fellow Greeks, the maidens are now eternally doomed to hold up the roof of a building. They're being punished. And that's all sort of grim, but its a really great example of how Greek myth was such a big part of life in those ancient days.
These stories were common and well known. They were as much a part of life to Greeks as talking about Star Wars and Marvel movies is to many people in the U.S. today. Maybe you and your friends got super into Twilight. Ancient Greeks might be super into stories about the Persian Wars or the Trojan War or the war between Athens and Sparta.
Ancient Greeks went to war a lot. There's nothing I can do about that now.
So, anyway, here's this hugely important and ancient monument thing, right? And it is actually really amazing when you see it at the museum because this really gives you a good idea of the scale of it.
There's something else you're going to notice about this as you're looking at it. One of the chicks is missing. There are five women standing on the porch and then there's this empty space. So, where is the other woman/pillar?
She's in the British Museum, of course!
I know. It's weird. So let's take a quick time warp over to London together, and I'll explain what the heck is going on here.
So, this is the missing sister from the porch of the Caryatids, which is attached to a building on top of the Acropolis in Athens, Greece. She is standing here in a stairwell of the British Museum in London, which is just a shade under 2,000 miles away. She lives here at the British Museum along with a whole bunch of stuff that was literally pried right off the stones of the Parthenon, which is the most famous building on the Acropolis and one of the most famous structures on Earth.
This statue was removed, along with many other statues and the highly controversial Parthenon marbles, from Athens by a guy named Lord Elgin. He obtained permission from the government that was in charge of Athens at the time, which was Turkey, and he took all this stuff all the way to London. It took a couple of years and he gave it all as a gift to the King of England. These items all ended up on display at the British Museum.
Athens has asked for the return of these items on many, many occasions over many years. It’s a whole thing and if you want to hear a whole lot more about it, check out my walkthrough video of the British Museum. You can actually see a whole bunch of stuff from other countries that are not England, and learn more about why London has this stuff and possibly, be pretty weirded out about how kind of terrible they are for continuing to have this stuff.
Parthenon Marbles
The entire third floor of the Acropolis Museum is dedicated to the Parthenon marbles. The Parthenon marbles are a series of friezes, which are carved pieces of marble, which once lined the outer walls of the Parthenon. The frieze was several inches long and came down from the roof of the building. It told a different story from Greek history and mythology on every side. The Trojan war is depicted on one side, the Persian Wars are on another, and so on.
The marbles here at the Acropolis Museum are fake. They’re not real. These are replicas that were very carefully done to look exactly like the real Parthenon Marbles, which are currently on permanent display at the British Museum. Lord Elgin had these marbles pried right off the Parthenon itself so they could be taken to England, where they remain to this day.
You can see the replicas here and the display is really beautiful. As you walk around it, you will see the Parthenon on the hill in the background and it’s really very nice.
Beneath the Main Floor
The museum also has a feature that I haven’t seen anywhere else and don’t expect to find anywhere else. You can actually go underneath the museum and get a look at the ancient ruins beneath it.
This is super cool area of the museum and you can find it below the ground floor, which you can actually see through the glass floor if you look up while you’re down here. This is the archaeological level of the museum where ruins are still being studied. You’ll get a good look at the way stones were laid out and you’ll get a much better idea of just how large this area is.
There’s also a small gallery down here where you can see some of the items that have been uncovered here. It’s a really cool feature of the museum that I really liked. I've been to a lot of museum and this is super unique.
Day at the Museum
Admission to the Acropolis Museum is about $40 per person, depending on what the exchange rate between the dollar and the Euro might be that day, which is kind of a lot as far as museums go. I actually have a way for you to go at a more reduced rate, so check out my budget hacks video about Athens to get more information on that.
There are various opportunities and package deals that can help make this bit more affordable but even with the admission price, it’s definitely worth seeing this place if you’re a history lover. The underground level alone is pretty mind-blowing.
Opening times for this museum vary depending on the season and on religious holidays, so make sure you check to find out if the museum is open on the specific date you plan to come here. I had to change my entire itinerary for Athens at the very last minute because of a religious holiday I had not considered strongly enough. This town will shut down over a religious holiday and that means even the most famous attractions. Stuff you traveled thousands of miles just to see. So check your date and double-check your date to make sure you can come here and see all of this.
I also did a full walking tour of the Acropolis and the Parthenon, which is where all the stuff in the museum came from, so check that out if you’d like to continue having adventures in ancient Greece with me.
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