BSA course Day 2 - The Acropolis and Acropolis Museum
- tracyrabaiotti
- Aug 24, 2022
- 3 min read
Updated: Aug 25, 2023
Weather - interesting!
Step Count - 18088
Straight down to business after our gentle introduction of Day 1, we headed out at 8am for the walk to the Acropolis. The clouds looked ominous as we headed up the slopes, but we were distracted from the thunder by an inside visit to the Parthenon. It was such a privilege to walk where only a few get to go, and hear all about the challenges of restoring ancient architecture from Vasileia Manidaki, one of the architects of the restoration project. We visited the workshops and watched how the blocks of Pentelic marble, from an adjacent quarry to that which yielded the original stone, were skilfully carved and shaped to be attached seamlessly to the surviving blocks of the West wall. The clamps used are exactly the same as the originals, but now made of titanium for strength & longevity.

The inside view showed a totally different perspective, particularly of the damage caused by the explosion of 1687, during the bombardment of the Acropolis by the Venetians fighting the Ottoman Turks.

Photo credit: The British School at Athens
Fun fact - the architect Pheidias designed this Doric temple dedicated to Athena with few straight lines, to give an optical illusion of straightness when viewed from afar. The four corners are lower than the four walls, and the columns are cigar-shaped, wider at the base than the top, and lean slightly inwards. This effect is known as entasis, and was discovered by Francis Penrose, first director of the British School at Athens.
The rain held off for the rest of our time at the Acropolis, where we looked at less familiar remains such as the archaic temple of Athena and the spolia of the column drums reused in the building of the North wall. We also imagined how imposing the statue of Athena Promachus, patroness of Athens in her guise as a warrior, would have been as it was large enough to be seen from the port of Piraeus almost 6 miles away.
After lunch the sun had returned, just as we headed inside to the Acropolis museum. Our first lectures on Day 1 encouraged us to think about museology, particularly how sites and museums are planned and laid out and why.
The Acropolis museum is a light, airy and modern space in stark contrast to the antiquities it displays, and moves the visitor from the bronze age near the entrance, designed to replicate the experience of processing up to the Acropolis through the propylaea, through several floors culminating in the spectacular top floor gallery displaying the Parthenon metopes, frieze, pediment sculptures and acroterion.

These are all displayed in the same orientation, and at the same proportions, as they would have been in situ on the Parthenon, which can be seen through the vast glass wall aligned with the temple itself. The gallery cleverly combines the ancient with the modern, substituting metal columns for the marble colonnade, but placing the viewer closer to the stonework than would have been experienced by visitors in antiquity. The frieze depicts a procession which has been interpreted by some as representing the Panathenaia, the transportation of the peplos from the kerameikos to the statue of Athena Parthenos by the sacred olive tree on the Acropolis. After having visited the interior of the Parthenon in the morning and being astounded by the sheer scale of the building, knowing that all visitors can experience a similar perspective in this very different space, drawn onwards by the dynamic sculptures and the story they tell, is reassuring.
The beautifully displayed caryatids, columns in female form, from the Erechtheion se m to convey a more direct message. They stand in the same formation as they would have in situ, and the empty space between the maidens is immediately obvious. We were interested to see a children's book in the gift shop which told a story of the missing sister joining her siblings at night before returning to her lonely home in the British Museum. Perhaps museology is not always as subtle as it seems.

Highlight of the afternoon was seeing the famous Lego model of the Acropolis in all its quirky glory, packed with scenes from ancient and modern Greek history, and photographing our course director Dr Michael Loy with his Lego Classicist minifigure.
Michael has written a fantastic article with far more detail about the scenes it depicts, and you can find it here.
After a long but incredible day, the weather finally broke as we walked home. In a feat of determination, we walked back through a torrential downpour and thunderstorms, reaching the sanctuary of the hostel soaked through to the skin. Thank goodness for warm rain!
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