The Agora of Athens

From Monastiraki metro station and square, the ancient Agora of Athens is just five minutes away. Moving north-west from the Acropolis. On arrival, you are first confronted by the elongated Stoa of Attalos, reconstructed using the old building stock of the area, and the Athens-Piraeus railway tunnel that runs along the side of the site. Entrance to the Agora is from a street lined with terraced restaurants.

The Agora as seen from the Areopagus Hill.The Stoa of Attalos on the right. March 2022. Photo OI



The Stoa of Attalos from the side of the railway line. Photo OI
 

In Athens, as in every ancient Greek city, the agora (assembly area, square) was the centre of public life. It was the place of commerce, political meetings and elections, trials, theatre performances, religious processions, military exercises and sporting competitions, social gatherings and philosophy lessons. The Agora was a constant in the daily life of Athenians.


The Agora's guide sign


Here we are at a key site of life in Antiquity. The Agora was a square of about 200x250 metres next to the Acropolis. Many administrative buildings, temples, altars, stoa buildings (porticos) and fountain-houses were gradually built around the square. The concept of democracy was first developed and practised in the 5th and 4th centuries BCE in the Agora of Athens. The area is surrounded by buildings that served the practice of democracy: the Bouleuterion (council house), where the 500 members of the council (Boule) held their meetings, the Tholos, the seat of the members of the executive council, the state archives and the seat of the executive council committees.

The Agora’s guide sign


The Agora was frequented by statesmen such as Themistocles, Pericles and Demosthenes, poets such as Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes, historians such as Thucydides and Herodotus, artists such as Pheidias and Polygnotos, and philosophers such as Socrates and Aristotle.

Many important roads led here, the most important of which was the Panathenaic festival-road. The road was named after the festival in honour of Athena.  Every four years, a procession to the Acropolis passed along the road. The procession is depicted in the Parthenon frieze. The road was also known by the simpler name of “Dromos”, meaning “road”.
The procession as illustrated in the guide signs.


The road was a continuation of the Sacred Way from Eleusis. It entered Athens from the Dipylon of Kerameikos and from there to the entrance of the Acropolis and the Agora it cut diagonally through the central square.

The area north-west of the Acropolis was originally used as a cemetery. The oldest finds in the area date back to 3000 BCE. It was first built as a civic centre in 500 BCE. Peisistratus organised the building stock of the area and several public buildings were constructed there.

The Agora was destroyed by the Persians in 480 BCE. However, the area was rebuilt. The temple of Hephaestus (444 BCE) was completed during the Pericles period. The Stoa of Attalos was built in the Hellenistic period.


The Agora was built around 150 BC. Guide sign.


The Greek agora was originally a 'finished' rectangular square surrounded by public buildings. Later, in the Roman period, the function of the area changed and buildings were also constructed in its centre. First the Temple of Ares was moved to the square and later the Odeion of Agrippa was built in the centre of the square. A new Roman agora was built on the eastern side of the old Agora.

Reconstruction of the Odeion. Guide sign.
View from the Agora of Athens to the Roman Agora. Photo OI



The end of the Agora in its original sense came in 267 CE following the Herulian invasion. The temple of Hephaestus was the only building to survive in the area and was later converted into a Christian church.

The temple of Hephaestus as seen from Areopagus Hill. Photo OI

Temple of Hephaestus. Photo OI
The destroyed buildings were demolished to get stone for the new city walls, the western part of which included the front wall of the Stoa of Attalos. The Agora remained outside this wall. A brief renaissance in the area took place in the 5th and 6th centuries, when a large Gymnasium was built in the central area.
Some of Athens' older fortifications have been preserved for example in the Benaki Museum of Islamic Art, where part of a defensive wall from 300 BCE has been excavated and preserved in the basement. It was once built to reinforce the city's defences against Macedonian attacks, as an extension of the defensive wall built during the Themistocles period. Photo OI



The Agora area was abandoned in the late 6th century until it was resettled in the early 11th century. By the early 13h century, a densely populated settlement had developed on the ruins of the Agora, which included the Church of the Holy Apostles. In 1854, the Temple of Hephaestus, which had since the Middle Ages served as the Christian Church of St George, was the site of King Otto's welcome reception to the new capital of modern Greece. In 1891, the settlement of Vlassarou, built on the ruins of the Agora, was split in two by the Athens-Piraeus railway.

The Agora archaeological site was not unearthed for free. In order to excavate the old structures, an entire district had to be demolished during the excavations. A picture of a bookstore window in Athens, with a book written about the area. Photo OI
Agora, March 2022. Photo OI


Archaeological research in the Agora of Athens began in the 19th century. The Greek Archaeological Society surveyed different parts of the Agora from 1859 to 1908 and the German Archaeological Institute from 1896 to 1897. Since 1931, the American School of Classical Studies has carried out systematic excavations in the area.

Photo of the Agora's guide sign showing the Stoa of Attalos before the reconstruction, from 1952. Original photo ASCSA
Stoa of Attalos. Image of the guide sign (watercolour by Piet de Jong).    

Stoa of Attalos. Photos OI


Some 400 buildings had to be demolished for the survey. In the 1950s, after the excavations were completed, the archaeological site was landscaped and planted with native plants according to the plans of the American landscape architect R. Griswold. At the same time, the Church of the Holy Apostles was restored in the Byzantine style. The Stoa of Attalos was reconstructed in its original form.


Stoa of Attalos, with the Church of the Holy Apostles in front of it. Photo OI




The Greek Ministry of Culture has been responsible for the Archaeological Site and the Museum of the Ancient Agora since 1957. Between 1997 and 2004, the Agora and Areopagus archaeological site was renovated. In 2004, the ground floor exhibition of the Stoa of Attalos was renovated and in 2012 a new exhibition was built in the building.

View from the Agora towards the Areopagus hill. Photo OI






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Text information from the site's guide signs.


 

Location: Stoa Attalou, Adrianou 24, Athina 105 55, Kreikka

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