Agora the Market Place and Ancient City of Athens

Agora and other archeological sites in Athens are in ruins; some are just scattered stones which roughly etched the shapes of the foundations of old buildings and rooms.

The Agora as it was known was one of the most important part of the ancient city of Athens. It was a busy market place and civic center in its heydays. If you are here with a blank mind it can be quite confusing and frustrating. And if you are not with any guided tours it is best you read up about the place so that you can understand and correlate the sites and sights.

Agora and Other Archeological Sites in Athens

I had referred to some books. There are plenty of informative boards that describe the place. One has to use a lot of imagination. For me the very act of stepping on sites of ‘150BC and beyond’ made me ancient!

My school history textbook characters Aristotle, Socrates, Plato more seem to come to life, walking around this same site discussing philosophy, science, medicine. What I could and how far I could stretch my imagination seemed to make more meaning than what I could actually see!

Agora Athens - Ruins

Agora Athens – Ruins

The Agora of Athens was teeming with life in the BCs! A tour through the museum in Agora gives a good idea of their clothes, footwear, and head gears worn by them then.

Ancient Agora, this is the same place where Socrates taught. Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine and its Hippocratic Oath, and Pythagoras, a mathematician who developed the geometric theory of a triangle’s sides, were both highly public figures who taught and shared ideas in their own hometown agoras.

You can read more here if you are interested in Socrates. The Agora.

Roman Agora Athens

After the tour of Greek Agora we walked to Roman Agora, also called the Market of Caesar and Augustus.

The monumental Gate of Athena Archegetis (“Athena the Leader”) has an inscription which is a record of the fact that Julius Caesar and Augustus provided the funds for the construction of Roman Agora in the 1st century B.C.

The Roman Agora, much smaller than the Greek Agora, is open area with no shade, surrounded by colonnades on all four sides. The huge space inside the enclosure has ruins and several columns still standing tall and strong.

The ruins that exist there are of a series of shops, a fountain. a second entrance on the east, leading up to a public latrine and the Tower of the Winds.

I have this strange weakness for these columns and have taken plenty of pictures of them against the blue sky and selfies with column in the background.

The Tower of Winds was shut to tourists that day.

Location of Roman Agora

This is located to the north of Acropolis and to east of Greek Agora. All three sites are connected by well laid out streets and at a short distance from each other.

See the best preserved temple of Athens: Temple of Hephaestus in Athens

Library of Hadrian

After the tour of Roman Agora we walked to the Library of Hadrian is very close to it and it is possible to cover both these sites in an hour.

The Library of Hadrian provided the people of Athens with a new, multi-purpose, public square and cultural center that contained a garden, works of art, a library, and lecture halls.

Just imagine how advanced they were then! This complex too has a huge open area inside; earlier plans reveal a central pool and garden, surrounded by columns made from marble.

Library of Hadrian Athens

Library of Hadrian Athens Greece

Kerameikos Ancient Cemetery of Athens

After the tour of the ancient library we took the metro to reach Kerameikos – the Ancient Cemetery of Athens.  Kerameikos, is in the northwest of Acropolis; in fact the farthest.

It has the cemetery and the “demosion sema” (public burial monument) where Perikles delivered his funeral oration in 431 B.C. (It is close to the metro station.)

There is a good museum here with excellent display. This complex is huge and it can easily take 2 hours to cover the ground and the museum, better time yourself if you wish to visit this place.

Kerameikos Ancient Cemetery of Athens Greece

Kerameikos Ancient Cemetery

 

Change of Guard in Syntagma Square Athens, Greece
Visit to Temple of Hephaestus in Athens Greece

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