Continued from yesterday”¦ we walked a few blocks to the Olympeion, which is a temple constructed to honor Zeus, the god of the sky and king over all the gods of ancient Greece. The site has been considered a holy place to Zeus since 600 BC. In the early days, they simply worshipped in an empty field. Over the years, several efforts were made to build a temple. The work would start, only to have the project abandoned for one reason or another. Many years later, the work would start again, only to be abandoned again. The temple was finally completed in 132 AD, under Roman Emperor Hadrian. It was one of the most impressive temples of the Roman Empire, with 104 columns. There were two enormous statues inside of equal size, one of Zeus and one of Hadrian. In the 5th century BC, the temple began to deteriorate. During the Middle Ages, the temple was converted to a Christian church, and under the Ottomans a mosque was built on the site. By 1852, only 16 columns were left standing. A storm knocked one of the columns over. It was believed that the falling of the columns liberates evil, and an outbreak of cholera at about the same time was blamed on the column’s fall.

This site isn’t anywhere close to being as put back together as the Acropolis is. There is the foundation of the temple in the middle of a field. There are a few columns left standing on the foundation. There is the one column that fell in 1852, still lying where it fell. The building was enormous in its day, very large and very tall. We were fascinated by the fallen column. Standing, the pillars look like they were carved from one giant piece of marble, but really they carefully carved are discs stacked together.

On the grounds is another impressive monument, called Hadrian’s arch. It was completed at the same time as the temple, serving as an entranceway from regular old Athens into the spectacular new Roman Athens.

There are the remains of a few other small building being excavated around the edge of the site. There are quite a few scattered pieces of marble near the smaller buildings, pieces of statues, engraved tablets, and so forth. Needless to say, we weren’t there for very long.

We made a stop by the hotel to rest and recharge the camera battery. Our next destination was the ancient Agora. On the way, we walked through the Athens flea market. We were expecting an open area with vendors selling used goods and handicrafts off folding tables, like a swap meet. There were maybe a handful of vendors that fit the handicraft category, but the majority of the flea market was regular stores with regular merchandise, nothing different than any of the rest of Athens.

The Agora is next to the flea market, on the north side of the Acropolis. In its day, the Agora (means place of gathering) was the heart of Athens. It was the center of political, judicial, commercial, administrative, social, religious and cultural activities. The area was inhabited as early as 3000 BC, and in the early 6th century BC the government decided to move its administrative center there. They tore down houses and put up public buildings. It slowly became “the” place to be for all aspects of life. The concept of democracy was born and flourished at this site. The Slavs invaded Athens in 580 AD and razed most of the Agora. In the middle of the 19th century, people began to settle in the agora and build homes. In the mid-20th century, the Greek government decided to restore the agora, so they moved the residents out and destroyed their houses to begin the excavation work. See, history does repeat itself.

We walked in the entrance and looked at the directory. There were a lot of buildings here once upon a time. We decided to start with the Stoa of Attalos, located at the east end of the site. It was originally built in 150 BC and was reconstructed in the 1950’s. It is currently used as a museum to display the assorted artifacts found within the site. It was hot and we were hoping the museum was air conditioned. As an FYI, the little round dots in the center of the lower blocks are handles to carry the blocks. Once the stones were in place, the handles would be chiseled off to make the stones smooth. The un-chiseled stones were probably part of the foundation, underground and not visible.

The Stoa is quite large, much bigger than it looks in the photo above. There is a wide porch that runs along the front of the building. Statues and fragments of statues from the Classical and Roman eras are on display all up and down the porch, including several human figures that are much larger than normal people. The first sign inside the museum says that the building had originally housed 42 different shops between the two floors. We hadn’t realized that “stoa” meant “mall”. Attalos is the guy who paid for the building to be erected. The artifacts are grouped together chronologically, so the first room has late Neolithic pieces and the last room has Byzantine. The majority of the pieces on display are pottery. It is well laid out and labeled. It is interesting to see the progression of art over time.

To be continued”¦