This is the third winter I have visited Athens and have two earlier posts about the city on this site.

This year I convinced CAMarchand to come over to Greece and join me for a short time. We have been staying in Athens, and will start a little road trip around the Peloponnese peninsula tomorrow.

The Acropolis
The number one Athens must see site.
We have been living in the old town and from almost anyplace you can look up at the Acropolis.

The Acropolis is the site, the high jutting rock.

One of the buildings on the Acropolis is the Parthenon, the large Doric temple built around 500BC as a celebration of their victory over an invasion by the Persians.

The Ottomans occupied Athens from the mid 1400’s. During an attack by the Venetians in 1687 the Ottomans fortified the Acropolis and stored their ammunition in the Parthenon. A direct artillery hit exploded the ammunitions and severely damaged the Parthenon.
There is a smaller Doric temple standing complete in the “Agora”, the ruins of the ancient Greek/Roman city below the Acropolis.  Here you can learn some things about the inner workings of these temples.

Around 1800 a British “Lord” (bribed the guards per the Greeks), removed the surviving sculptures and sold them to the British Museum. The Greeks have built a museum to house them upon their return, which they have been trying to accomplish since the mid 1980’s.
A few more pictures.

There are also plenty of ruins of mainly Greek, Roman, and Ottoman history just lying all around all over the old town.

For more history I would direct you to the fantastic National Archeological Museum here in Athens. Great permanent displays. Great temporary displays. Covering all of the northern Mediterranean civilizations from Neolithic until Roman times. Completely described in English.

I could have taken a million pictures in the museum, but like these two.

A good place to learn some history.

Some 3500 year old data storage devices.

Here are some tourist pictures of Athens “just walking around”.

One comment: Downtown Athens has the most shocking graffiti problem I have ever seen. Even worse than Prague. Areas NOT covered with grafitti are notable. This takes some getting used to.

And, of course, a few food pictures.