For more than a century the sculptures of the Acropolis were kept in a small museum built on the rock itself, next to the Parthenon, far too cramped to show them as they deserved. The new Acropolis Museum, opened in June 2009, changed everything: a modern building of glass and concrete, designed by the Swiss-French architect Bernard Tschumi with Greek architect Michael Photiadis, stands about 300 metres from the rock in the Makrygianni district and holds some four thousand objects in wide, bright spaces. Each floor is designed in relation to the Acropolis, visible through the great windows.
Beneath the museum: an ancient neighbourhood
During construction an entire Athenian neighbourhood emerged, inhabited from the classical period to Byzantine times, with streets, houses, workshops, baths and cisterns. Instead of covering it over, the architects raised the building on pillars and covered the excavation with glass floors: from the entrance you walk above the ruins. Part of the excavation can be visited directly, walking down among the ancient walls.
The route
Ground floor: the slopes gallery. A rising ramp with a glass floor recalls the climb to the rock. It displays objects found in the sanctuaries and homes on the slopes of the Acropolis: offering vessels, votive figurines, objects linked to the cults of the nymphs and Asclepius, and finds from the Theatre of Dionysus.
First floor: the archaic gallery. The brightest room, peopled by statues of the 7th and 6th centuries BC destroyed by the Persians in 480 BC and buried by the Athenians on the rock, where they were rediscovered in the 19th century. The most famous are the Moschophoros, a man carrying a calf on his shoulders, and the korai, maidens in embroidered robes smiling the typical archaic smile and still bearing traces of colour. Among them is the Peplos Kore. Here too is the Kritios Boy, which marks the transition to the classical style. The same floor displays finds from the Propylaea, the temple of Athena Nike, with the famous relief of Nike adjusting her sandal, and the Erechtheion.
The Caryatids. On the first-floor balcony stand five of the six original Caryatids of the Erechtheion, the female statues that held up the temple's porch; copies stand on the rock today. The sixth is in the British Museum in London, and its place is deliberately left empty. After a long laser cleaning the statues have regained the details of their hairstyles.
Top floor: the Parthenon gallery. The heart of the museum. The all-glass hall is rotated to share the orientation of the Parthenon, visible a few hundred metres away. Around a central core the same size as the temple's cella, the frieze is mounted in its original sequence, about 160 metres long, depicting the Panathenaic procession; above are the metopes and, at either end, the sculptures of the pediments. The originals kept in Athens alternate with white plaster casts of pieces held abroad, mainly in the British Museum: the contrast makes plain how much is missing.
The Roman period and beyond. The second floor holds portraits and sculptures from the Hellenistic age to Roman times, and a section on life on the Acropolis in later centuries.
The question of the Parthenon marbles
Between 1801 and 1812 agents of Lord Elgin, British ambassador to the Ottoman sultan, removed and shipped to England about half of the Parthenon's surviving sculptures, a Caryatid and other pieces; in 1816 they were bought by the British Parliament and have been in the British Museum ever since. Greece has been asking for their return for decades, and the new museum was built partly to show that Athens can preserve and display them properly. The British Museum maintains that they were acquired legally, and a British law prevents it from giving away parts of its collection; in recent years there have been talks between the two sides, without a final agreement. Some fragments held in other museums, including a frieze fragment from the Salinas museum in Palermo, which arrived in Athens in 2022 and was then returned permanently, have already come back to Greece.
Practical information
| Item | Details |
|---|---|
| Address | Dionysiou Areopagitou 15, Makrygianni |
| Getting there | Metro Akropoli (red line 2), exit in front of the museum |
| Ticket | About 20 euros full price, reductions for students, over-65s and families; buy online or at the ticket office |
| Opening hours | Longer in summer, shorter in winter; late opening on Friday evenings. Check the official website |
| Time | 2-3 hours for a full visit |
| Facilities | Café and restaurant with an Acropolis-view terrace, shop, cloakroom |
The museum is not one of the state sites: it has its own ticket, separate from the Acropolis ticket. Large bags must be left in the cloakroom; photos without flash are allowed in almost all rooms except the archaic gallery.
Tips
- Many people visit the rock first and then the museum; others prefer the reverse, so they reach the Acropolis knowing what to look for. On hot days the museum is perfect for the middle of the day.
- The second-floor restaurant has one of the city's finest terraces, at reasonable prices.
- On summer evenings the museum stays open later: the best time to see the illuminated Parthenon through the windows.
See also the National Archaeological Museum, other Athens museums and tickets and opening hours.