Parthenon

The Parthenon: What’s Actually Still There and What Isn’t

The Parthenon was blown up in 1687. Venetian forces under Francesco Morosini were besieging the Acropolis, which the Ottomans were using as a fortress. The Ottomans stored their gunpowder inside the Parthenon, believing the Venetians wouldn’t fire on an ancient temple. The Venetians fired on it anyway, 700 barrels of powder exploded, taking out the middle section, the roof, and most of the interior walls. Morosini then tried to remove the sculptural group from the west pediment as a trophy; his rigging broke and the figures fell to the ground and shattered. The Venetians occupied Athens for less than two years before withdrawing, having contributed more to the destruction of ancient Athens than any other event since the Persian sack of 480 BCE.

The Parthenon was completed in 432 BCE as a temple to Athena. What survives today is a structurally significant ruin undergoing active restoration, not a building. What visitors see today is a structurally significant ruin, not a building, and understanding that changes how you experience it.

The ongoing restoration project has been running since 1975 and has involved dismantling parts of the structure, treating the original marble, and reassembling it with titanium pins and new marble infill pieces clearly distinguishable from the ancient ones. The scaffolding that has surrounded the building for decades is now part of the Acropolis landscape. The restoration won’t finish for years yet.

The Acropolis Ticket

A single combined ticket (€20 in season, €10 off-season) covers the Acropolis and eight other sites including the Ancient Agora, the Roman Agora, the Library of Hadrian, the Kerameikos cemetery, and several others. Buy this ticket at any of the included sites rather than at the Acropolis entrance itself, where queues concentrate. The ticket is valid for 5 days.

The Acropolis opens at 8am. Arrive before 9am in summer and you will have the first hour with significantly fewer people. By 10am on a July morning, the path to the Propylaea (the main entrance gateway) is moving at walking pace rather than tourist shuffle pace.

July and August are the most crowded months and also the hottest. Temperatures on the exposed rock regularly reach 38-40°C in the afternoon. The marble reflects heat effectively. Come before 10am or after 5pm. Bring water; there are no cafes on the hill.

What You’re Looking At

The Propylaea, the monumental entrance gateway built simultaneously with the Parthenon, is in many ways better preserved and gives a clearer sense of the architectural ambition. Stand inside the gateway and look back toward the city to understand the deliberate theatrical framing of the approach.

The Erechtheion, to the north of the Parthenon, contains the Porch of the Caryatids: six female figures carved as structural columns supporting the porch roof. What’s there now are faithful copies; five of the originals are in the Acropolis Museum below the hill, and one has been in the British Museum since 1801 (removed by Lord Elgin, currently the subject of ongoing repatriation discussions).

The Parthenon’s interior has been inaccessible for decades and the original cult statue of Athena (a roughly 12-metre chryselephantine statue of gold and ivory) has been gone since antiquity. The exterior sculpture (the metopes, the frieze, and the pediment figures) is mostly in the Acropolis Museum and the British Museum. The building you see is structurally the original ancient structure, heavily restored, with most of its decoration absent.

The Acropolis Museum

The museum at the base of the Acropolis hill, opened in 2009, is one of the best archaeological museums built in the past 30 years and is genuinely excellent. The third floor is designed to hold the Parthenon frieze at its original scale and height; the portions in Athens are displayed there, with exact-size casts of the sections in London filling the gaps. This arrangement makes the ongoing repatriation argument visual and concrete. The Caryatid figures from the Erechtheion, five of them in a row in a carefully controlled environment, are extraordinary up close. Allow 2-3 hours.

The Ancient Agora

The Agora below the Acropolis was the marketplace and civic centre of ancient Athens: where trials were held, philosophy discussed, and daily commercial life conducted. The Temple of Hephaestus at the western edge is one of the best-preserved ancient Greek temples in the world, significantly better preserved than the Parthenon, and sees a fraction of the visitors. The Stoa of Attalos has been completely reconstructed and now houses the Agora Museum, with an excellent collection of daily life objects.

Neighbourhoods Near the Acropolis

Monastiraki, on the north slope of the Acropolis hill, has the main flea market (Sundays for the best version) and a mix of good and tourist-grade food. The souvlaki stands on Mitropoleos Street near the Monastiraki square have been feeding Athens cheaply for decades; Kostas on the square is frequently cited as the best.

Psyrri, immediately adjacent to Monastiraki, has the better restaurant and bar scene without the tourist concentration. Dinner at around 9pm at one of the tavernas with outdoor seating on the square is the correct Athens evening.