The Ancient City

Archeologists have little knowledge of the buildings and structures of ancient Athens before 480 B.C., when it was destroyed by the Persians. The city that arose after Persia's defeat became the cultural center of the classical world. Its art, literature, and philosophy were the fountainhead of Western and Middle Eastern culture. So strong was the Athenian creative force that even after the political collapse of the Athenian Empire in 404 B.C. Athens retained its cultural supremacy in Greece. When the Greeks came under outside domination, the foreign rulers constructed public buildings and monuments in Athens as testimonials to its prestige and enduring greatness.

The middle period of the fifth century B.C., during which the city's most beautiful buildings were constructed, is known as Athens' Golden Age, or Age of Pericles (after its leader during this period). The city at that time centered around the Acropolis and the Agora. The Panathenaic Way, a road named for a great annual religious procession that passed over it, crossed the Agora diagonally, and wound up to the Acropolis.

Between the Agora and the Acropolis on the west was the Areopagus (the Hill of Ares, or Mars), where the court of the same name had its sessions. The citizens' Assembly gathered usually at the Pnyx, a natural amphitheater to the southwest. The city was enclosed by a wall, from which extended the so-called Long Walls that formed a protected passageway to the port of Piraeus.

On the Acropolis Pericles built the Parthenon, dedicated to the city's patron goddess, Athena, the Temple of Athena Nike, and the Propylaea. A theater and temple dedicated to Dionysus were built along the south foot of the Acropolis. Facing the Agora were the Temple of Hephaistos, government offices, and stoas (open-fronted buildings housing shops and promenades). Another temple, the Erechtheum, was built on the Acropolis after the death of Pericles.

In the latter part of the fourth century B.C., when Greece had come under Macedonian rule, the theater of Dionysus was rebuilt in stone, and a stadium was constructed outside the city walls to the southeast. In the second century B.C. Antiochus IV had construction resumed on the Temple of the Olympian Zeus, which had been started in the sixth century in the southeast corner of the city. The temple was completed under the Roman emperor Hadrian in 129 A.D.

The Romans added many structures to Athens—two theaters, including the Odeum of Herodes Atticus; a library; a market and several stoas; temples; and an aqueduct. Hadrian built a walled suburb, known as New Athens, adjacent to the city on the east. The stadium was rebuilt in marble.