The New Acropolis Museum

We arrived in the early afternoon and made our way to our hotel to check in and drop off our bags. The hotel was a short few blocks from the Acropolis, though none of it could be seen from any of the rooms. During the first afternoon we took our bearings, wandered past a number of archeological sites and explored the Plaka District. The focal point of our evening was a trip to the new Museum of the Acropolis, opened in 2009.

One of the realities of historic sites is the tension between renewal and preservation. Over the last two millennia the temples of Athens have been routinely burned, sacked, defaced, converted to other uses and lately been abandoned to the elements. The Christians pounded the crap out of the bas-relief and other statuary in righteous zeal over its pagan imagery and then converted the building into a church. The Muslims did more of the same, adding a minaret. The British treated the Acropolis and remaining monuments as their own private flea market, effectively looting countless precious artifacts which now proudly reside in their museums. Recently, pollution has done a number on all of the marble in the Mediterranean, creating a dark black covering and causing more erosion in a few decades than happened over the tens of centuries preceding. What do you then do with a precious cultural heritage such as the temples of the Acropolis?

The Greeks responded by opening a new Museum of the Acropolis. It is a beautiful, well thought out museum. You enter through a plaza from the street which borders the southern face of the Acropolis.

The entire building is built on pilings over an archeological site which they hope to one day open to visitors. The open portion is cleverly covered by the terrace for the second floor restaurant.

You get a nice view of the acropolis from the vast expanse of windows on the northern side of the building. Technically, pictures are not allowed in the museum. But, depending on where you were, the guards either looked the other way or were tyrannical about it.

We made our way immediately to the top floor to take advantage of the last light of the afternoon. The top floor contains the remains of all of the various elements from the Parthenon. At the top of the building was originally a grouping of square panels called metopes with triglyphs between. The scores of panels recalled the great mythical battles of the Greeks: the Lapiths and Centaurs, Greeks and Amazons, Fall of Troy and Gods and Giants. The original panels are interspersed with copies of panels which exist elsewhere. These two replica panels depict part of the battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs.

The centaurs were invited to a wedding, got drunk and made inappropriate advances which were ultimately rebuffed in bloody battle.

In addition to the metopes, the remains of the Ionic frieze of the panathenaic procession and the pediment sculptures of the contest between Athena and Neptune and the Birth of Athena are also on display, but those guards were a little pickier when the camera came out. One nifty piece of remains is a carved plaque which details the costs of building the Parthenon.

The sunset was indeed spectacular, offering some interesting opportunities for capturing both the surroundings and a reflection of the various displays.

Once the sun had fully set we headed down two levels to the hall of statues. I took this picture from above just before the guards spotted me from below and shouted out for me to stop taking pictures. While the statues are part of a permanent display, a new project is looking at the use of color in the Parthenon by examining the remains of color on the statuary and building edifice. Apparently, the original building was almost garishly colored with pigments made of colored stone suspended in wax and applied directly to the marble.

Our evening ended with a meal in the museum restaurant. On Fridays the museum is open late and they arrange to have a special menu at the restaurant, complete with tablecloths and candlelight. The food was reasonably priced and quite good. The atmosphere was almost impossible to beat. How can you top nibbling on cheese and fried pastry while casually glancing over at the Parthenon lit up atop the Acropolis?