Athens Tickets and Tours | GetExperience.com

The Acropolis is a limestone table three hectares across, 150 metres above sea level. People have built on it since the Bronze Age. Almost everything standing now went up in one burst.

The Periclean rebuild

The Persians burned the earlier temples in 480 BC. The rebuilding ran under Pericles and left four buildings that still define the rock.

• The Parthenon. Built 447 to 438 BC in Pentelic marble. Its columns swell and lean inwards, so the eye reads them as straight.
• The Propylaia. The monumental gateway, begun in 437 BC and never finished — war with Sparta stopped it.
• The temple of Athena Nike. Small and Ionic, on the bastion by the gate.
• The Erechtheion. Finished around 406 BC, and the one with the caryatids. Those on it are copies.

How the visit goes

Every Acropolis tour follows the same line. You climb at the west end, pass the Propylaia and come out facing the Parthenon. Ninety minutes to two hours is honest.

Most people leave without seeing the south slope. Below it are the theatre of Dionysus, where Greek tragedy began, and the Odeon of Herodes Atticus. That one dates from AD 161.

The museum below finishes the job. It holds what came off the building and sets the Parthenon frieze at its original orientation. Five caryatids are there; the sixth is in London.

Practical

• Time slot. Acropolis tickets are booked online for a named hour, and the site caps entry at twenty thousand a day. Eight o'clock is quietest.
• Heat. The rock is bare, pale and shadeless, and afternoons pass 38C in summer. It has shut midday in the worst of it, and water is sold only at the gate.
• Shoes. Millions of feet have polished the bedrock to glass. Heels are barred at Greek sites.
• Price. Around thirty euros for an adult all year, with no winter reduction. The museum is charged separately.
• Access. A lift on the north side serves visitors who cannot climb, if arranged ahead.