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Article · Ancient Greece

The Acropolis of Athens: A Complete Guide

The Acropolis of Athens is the most famous archaeological site in the world. Rising about 50 meters (165 feet) above the modern city of Athens, the rocky outcrop has been a place of worship and a citadel for more than three thousand years. The Parthenon, the Propylaea, the Erechtheion, and the Temple of Athena Nike, built in the fifth century BCE during the Periclean building program, are among the most famous buildings in the history of Western architecture. The site has been continuously excavated, restored, and studied since the nineteenth century, and it was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1987.

This page is a complete guide to the Acropolis. It explains the geography, the history, the major buildings, and the modern history of the site. It links back to the Ancient Athens cluster, the Greek Architecture cluster, and the Ancient Greece pillar.

The Geography of the Acropolis

The Acropolis is a flat-topped limestone outcrop about 300 meters (1,000 feet) long and 130 meters (430 feet) wide, rising above the city of Athens. It is steep on all sides except the west, where it is connected to the higher ground of the Areopagus hill. In the Bronze Age, the Acropolis was fortified as a citadel, and a Mycenaean palace stood on its summit. The remains of the Cyclopean walls, the foundations of the Mycenaean palace, and the deep water well of the Bronze Age are still visible.

In historical times, the Acropolis was a sacred precinct dedicated to the goddess Athena, the patroness of the city. The major temples, altars, and statues were built on the summit, and the rest of the outcrop was filled with smaller sanctuaries, treasuries, and monuments. The Acropolis was surrounded by a defensive wall, and the only access was on the west, where the famous Propylaea served as the monumental gateway.

The Early History

The Acropolis has been inhabited since the Neolithic period. In the Bronze Age, it was a Mycenaean citadel, and the famous shaft graves of Mycenaean Athens lie beneath the later buildings. The Bronze Age palace was destroyed around 1200 BCE, in the general collapse of the Mycenaean world. In the Iron Age and Archaic period, the Acropolis was gradually turned into a sacred precinct, and several early temples and altars were built on its summit. The sixth-century BCE tyrant Pisistratus began a major building program on the Acropolis, and the great Hekatompedon (the “hundred-footer,” predecessor of the Parthenon) was built around 550 BCE. The earlier buildings were destroyed by the Persians in 480 BCE, when Xerxes sacked the city during the Persian Wars.

The Periclean Building Program (447–406 BCE)

The Acropolis as we know it today is largely the work of the Periclean building program of the mid-fifth century BCE. After the Persian Wars, the Athenians vowed never to rebuild the temples destroyed by the Persians, and the ruins were left as a memorial. In 447 BCE, the Athenian statesman Pericles launched a new building program, financed in part by the tribute of the Delian League, to create a new Acropolis worthy of the city’s imperial status.

The architects were Ictinus and Callicrates, and the overall artistic director was the sculptor Phidias. The sculptors who worked on the Parthenon have become known in modern scholarship as the “Phidias workshop,” and they have been the subject of intense study since the nineteenth century. The principal buildings of the Periclean program were:

A bronze statue of Athena Promachos, the “Athena who fights in the front line,” stood on the Acropolis, as did the great gold and ivory statue of Athena Parthenos inside the Parthenon. The whole summit of the Acropolis was a forest of marble buildings, bronze statues, altars, and votive offerings.

The Parthenon

The Parthenon, the temple of Athena Parthenos (“Athena the Virgin”), is the most famous building of the Acropolis and one of the most famous buildings in the world. It was designed by the architects Ictinus and Callicrates, with Phidias as the artistic director. The building is a peripteral Doric temple, with eight columns on the short sides and seventeen on the long sides, built of white Pentelic marble. It was about 69.5 meters (228 feet) long and 30.9 meters (101 feet) wide, and it was originally 13.7 meters (45 feet) high.

The Parthenon is famous for its optical refinements: the slight upward curve of the stylobate, the inward lean of the columns, the slight swelling of the column shafts, the corner columns slightly thicker than the others. These refinements, the Greeks believed, made the building look more perfect to the eye. The Parthenon also had an extraordinary sculptural program, including a continuous Ionic frieze running around the cella wall, ninety-two carved metopes, and two pediments filled with mythological sculptures.

The cult statue, the Athena Parthenos, was a colossal chryselephantine (gold and ivory) figure, 12 meters (40 feet) tall, made by Phidias and his workshop. The statue was lost in antiquity, probably in the fifth century CE.

You can read more about the architecture of the Parthenon in the Greek Architecture cluster.

The Propylaea

The Propylaea, the monumental gateway to the Acropolis, was designed by the architect Mnesicles and built between 437 and 432 BCE. The Propylaea is approached by a broad flight of marble steps, and the gate itself consists of a central Doric portico with six columns, flanked by two smaller Ionic porticoes. The northern wing of the Propylaea housed the famous Pinakotheke, the picture gallery, decorated with painted panels of Greek mythology. The southern wing contained a small temple to Athena Nike.

The Erechtheion

The Erechtheion, the most complex of the buildings on the Acropolis, was built between 421 and 406 BCE to replace an older temple. It was dedicated to both Athena and Poseidon, and it contained several sacred features: the olive tree that Athena had given the city, the mark of Poseidon’s trident on the rock, the salt well that Poseidon had opened, and the tomb of the legendary king Cecrops. The most famous feature of the Erechtheion is the Caryatid Porch, in which six maidens (the Caryatids) support the entablature on their heads. The original Caryatids are now in the Acropolis Museum and the British Museum; the south porch of the Erechtheion is supported by modern replicas.

The Temple of Athena Nike

The small Temple of Athena Nike stands on a bastion of the Acropolis wall to the southwest of the Propylaea. It was built between 427 and 424 BCE to commemorate the Athenian victories of the recent wars, and it is the earliest Ionic temple on the Acropolis. The temple was the setting for one of the most famous sculptural groups of the ancient world, the Nike Adjusting Her Sandal, of which several fragments survive in the Acropolis Museum.

The Acropolis in the Modern Era

The Acropolis has been continuously occupied for more than three thousand years, and the site has been damaged and rebuilt many times. The Parthenon was converted to a Christian church in the sixth century CE, and to a Catholic cathedral after the Fourth Crusade in 1204. In 1456, after the Ottoman conquest, the Parthenon was converted to a mosque.

In 1687, a Venetian army under Francesco Morosini besieged the Ottoman garrison on the Acropolis. A Venetian shell hit the Parthenon, which the Ottomans were using as a powder magazine, and the resulting explosion blew out the middle of the building. The surviving structure was further damaged when the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Lord Elgin, removed much of the surviving sculptural decoration between 1801 and 1812. The “Elgin Marbles” were bought by the British government in 1816 and are now in the British Museum, where they remain the subject of a long-standing repatriation dispute with the Greek government.

In the 1970s and 1980s, the Greek government began a major program of restoration of the Acropolis, which is still ongoing. The ancient structures are being restored to a consistent state using modern materials (including concrete and steel) that are reversible, and the site has become a model for the conservation of ancient monuments.