Sanctuary of Zeus Polieus

The Altar of Athena Polias was a former structure on the Acropolis of Athens dedicated to the goddess Athena.The altar's foundations were laid in 525 B.C. by the sons of the Athenian dictator Peisistratus, but may have overlaid an earlier temple constructed between 599 and 550. The altar itself stood within a narrow temple atop a marble pediment depicting battles between gods and giants. Images of Athena are shown as dominant and victorious within the armies of the gods.

Anafiotika (Greek: Αναφιώτικα pronounced [a.naˈfço.ti.ka]) is a scenic tiny neighborhood of Athens, part of the old historical neighborhood called Plaka. It lies in northerneast side of the Acropolis hill. The first houses were built in the era of Otto of Greece, when workers from the island of Anafi came to Athens in order to work as construction workers in the refurbishment of King Othon's Palace. The first two inhabitants were listed as G. Damigos, carpenter, and M. Sigalas, construction worker. Soon, workers from other Cycladic islands also started to arrive there, to work as carpenters or even stone and marble workers, in a further building reconstruction period in Athens, but also in the following era after the end of the reign of King Otto. In 1922, Greek refugees from Asia Minor also established here, altering the population that was up to that time only from the Cycladic islands. In 1950, part of this neighborhood was destroyed for archeological research and in 1970 the state started to buy the houses. In the modern era, there are only 45 houses remaining, while the little streets from Stratonos to the Acropolis rock are still unnamed and the houses are referred to as "Anafiotika 1", "Anafiotika 2", etc.The neighborhood was built according to typical Cycladic architecture, and even nowadays gives to visitors the feel of Greek islands in the heart of the city, with white walls and small spaces, usually with the presence of bougainvillea flowers. Houses are small and mostly cubic, small streets that often end up to ladders or even deadends at terraces, where one can sit and enjoy the night view of the city. "In this oasis of tranquility, nestled beneath the walls of the Acropolis, the intensity of Athens seems miles away"...

The Hekatompedon or Hekatompedos (Ancient Greek: ἑκατόμπεδος, from ἑκατόν, "hundred", and πούς, "foot"), also known as Ur-Parthenon and H–Architektur, was an ancient Greek temple on the Acropolis of Athens built from limestone in the Archaic period, and placed in the position of the present Parthenon.

The Old Temple of Athena or the Archaios Neos (Greek: Ἀρχαῖος Νεώς) was an archaic Greek limestone Doric temple on the Acropolis of Athens probably built in the second half of the sixth-century BCE, and which housed the xoanon of Athena Polias. The existence of an archaic temple to Athena had long been conjectured from literary references until the discovery of substantial building foundations under the raised terrace between the Erechtheion and Parthenon in 1886 confirmed it. While it is uncontroversial that a temple stood on the central acropolis terrace in the late archaic period and was burnt down in the Persian invasion of 480, nevertheless questions of its nature, name, reconstruction and duration remain unresolved.

The choragic monument of Thrasyllos is a memorial building erected in 320–319 BCE, on the artificial scarp of the south face of the Acropolis of Athens, to commemorate the choregos of Thrasyllos. It is built in the form of a small temple and fills the opening of a large, natural cave. It was modified in 271/70 by Thrasykles the son of Thrasyllos, agonothetes in the Great Dionysia Games. Pausanias refers to the monument indirectly providing us with the information that in the cave there existed a representation of Apollo and Artemis slaughtering the children of Niobe. Echoing the west part of the south wing of the Propylaea the facade of the monument is formed by two monumental doorways with antae and a central pillar, door frames, architrave with continuous guttae, frieze and cornice. The frieze was decorated with ten olive wreaths, five on each side of a central wreath while the cornice supported bases for the choragic tripods. It was built in a variety of marbles from local quarries. On the epistyle there was the inscription: Thrasyllos, son of Thrasyllos of Dekeleia, set this up, being choregos and winning in the men's chorus for the tribe of Hippothontis. Euios of Chalkis played the flute. Neaichmos was archon. Karidamos son of Sotios directed. Two subsequent inscriptions were added in the years 270/1 BCE, one reads: The demos was choregos, Pytharatos was archon. Thrasykles, son of Thrasyllos of Dekeleia, was agonothete. Hippothontis won the boys’ chorus. Theon the Theban played the flute. Pronomos the Theban directed. The structure would have been surmounted with three bronze tripods; prizes in the choregia. Stuart and Revett record a statue of Dionysios in place of the original tripods, this was likely a later addition at the time of the repair of the Theatre of Dionysus by Phaidros in the fourth century CE.Sometime in the Christian period a church was installed in the cave dedicated to Panaghia Spiliotissa. Lord Elgin removed the Hellenistic statue of Dionysos in 1802 as a part of the Elgin Marbles thus the sculpture was spared when the monument was destroyed by an Ottoman bombardment during the siege of Athens in 1827. Although the monument was scheduled to be restored in the nineteenth century by the Athens Archaeological Society some of the marble was recarved and reused on the Byzantine church of Soteira Lykodimou. Recent restoration work began in 2002 and draws largely on the measured drawing by Stuart and Revett undertaken in the eighteenth century. It was through the work of Stuart and Revett and J. D. Le Roy's Ruines des plus beaux monuments de la Grece (1758) that the Thrasyllos monument would influence later architecture. Both Karl Friedrich Schinkel and Alexander Thomson adopted the post-and-lintel, trabeated construction of the monument in their work.

The Older Parthenon or Pre‐Parthenon, as it is frequently referred to, constitutes the first endeavour to build a sanctuary for Athena Parthenos on the site of the present Parthenon on the Acropolis of Athens. It was begun shortly after the battle of Marathon (c. 490–88 BC) upon a massive limestone foundation that extended and leveled the southern part of the Acropolis summit. This building replaced a hekatompedon (meaning "hundred‐footer") and would have stood beside the archaic temple dedicated to Athena Polias. The Old Parthenon was still under construction when the Persians sacked the city in the Destruction of Athens in 480 BC, and razed the acropolis during the Second Persian invasion of Greece. The existence of the proto‐Parthenon and its destruction was known from Herodotus and the drums of its columns were plainly visible built into the curtain wall north of the Erechtheum. Further material evidence of this structure was revealed with the excavations of Panagiotis Kavvadias of 1885–1890. The findings of this dig allowed Wilhelm Dörpfeld, then director of the German Archaeological Institute, to assert that there existed a distinct substructure to the original Parthenon, called Parthenon I by Dörpfeld, not immediately below the present edifice as had been previously assumed. Dörpfeld’s observation was that the three steps of the first Parthenon consist of two steps of poros limestone, the same as the foundations, and a top step of Karrha limestone that was covered by the lowest step of the Periclean Parthenon. This platform was smaller and slightly to the north of the final Parthenon, indicating that it was built for a wholly different building, now wholly covered over. This picture was somewhat complicated by the publication of the final report on the 1885–90 excavations indicating that the substructure was contemporary with the Kimonian walls, and implying a later date for the first temple.If the original Parthenon was indeed destroyed in 480 BC, it invites the question of why the site was left a ruin for 33 years. One argument involves the oath sworn by the Greek allies before the battle of Plataea in 479 BC declaring that the sanctuaries destroyed by the Persians would not be rebuilt, an oath the Athenians were only absolved from with the Peace of Callias in 450. The mundane fact of the cost of reconstructing Athens after the Persian sack is at least as likely a cause. However the excavations of Bert Hodge Hill led him to propose the existence of a second Parthenon begun in the period of Kimon after 468 BC. Hill claimed that the Karrha limestone step Dörpfeld took to be the highest of Parthenon I was in fact the lowest of the three steps of Parthenon II whose stylobate dimensions Hill calculated to be 23.51x66.888m. One difficulty in dating the proto‐Parthenon is that at the time of the 1885 excavation the archaeological method of seriation was not fully developed: the careless digging and refilling of the site led to a loss of much valuable information. An attempt to make sense of the potsherds found on the acropolis came with the two-volume study by Graef and Langlotz published 1925–33. This inspired American archaeologist William Bell Dinsmoor to attempt to supply limiting dates for the temple platform and the five walls hidden under the re‐terracing of the acropolis. Dinsmoor concluded that the latest possible date for Parthenon I was no earlier 495 BC, contradicting the early date given by Dörpfeld. Further Dinsmoor denied that there were two proto‐Parthenons, and that the only pre‐Periclean temple was what Dörpfeld referred to as Parthenon II. Dinsmoor and Dörpfeld exchanged views in the American Journal of Archaeology in 1935.

The Parthenon (; Ancient Greek: Παρθενών, romanized: Parthenōn [par.tʰe.nɔ̌ːn]; Greek: Παρθενώνας, romanized: Parthenónas [parθeˈnonas]) is a former temple on the Athenian Acropolis, Greece, that was dedicated to the goddess Athena. Its decorative sculptures are considered some of the high points of classical Greek art, and the Parthenon is considered an enduring symbol of Ancient Greece, democracy, and Western civilization. The Parthenon was built in the 5th century BC in thanksgiving for the Hellenic victory over Persian Empire invaders during the Greco-Persian Wars. Like most Greek temples, the Parthenon also served as the city treasury. Construction started in 447 BC when the Delian League was at the peak of its power. It was completed in 438 BC; work on the artwork and decorations continued until 432 BC. For a time, it served as the treasury of the Delian League, which later became the Athenian Empire. In the final decade of the 6th century AD, the Parthenon was converted into a Christian church dedicated to the Virgin Mary. After the Ottoman conquest in the mid-15th century, it became a mosque. In the Morean War, a Venetian bomb landed on the Parthenon, which the Ottomans had used as a munitions dump, during the 1687 siege of the Acropolis. The resulting explosion severely damaged the Parthenon. From 1800 to 1803, the 7th Earl of Elgin took down some of the surviving sculptures, now known as the Elgin Marbles or simply Greek Marbles, which, although he had the permission of the then Ottoman government, has subsequently become controversial. Since 1975, numerous large-scale restoration projects have been undertaken to preserve remaining artifacts and ensure its structural integrity.

The Sanctuary of Pandion is the name sometimes given to the remains of a building located in the south-east corner of the Acropolis of Athens. Its foundations were found during the excavations for the construction of the Old Acropolis Museum (1865–1874).The 40m by 17m rectangular open-air building, dating to the later 5th century, was divided into two nearly equal parts by a wall. It faced west-northwest and was entered through a projecting portico on the western side.The name stems from the presumption that this was the location of the heroon (hero shrine) of Pandion, the eponymous hero of the Attic tribe Pandionis (usually assumed to be one of the two legendary kings of Athens, Pandion I or Pandion II), which was known to be located somewhere on the Acropolis.

The Erechtheion (latinized as Erechtheum /ɪˈrɛkθiəm, ˌɛrɪkˈθiːəm/; Ancient Greek: Ἐρέχθειον, Greek: Ερέχθειο) or Temple of Athena Polias is an ancient Greek Ionic temple-telesterion on the north side of the Acropolis, Athens, which was primarily dedicated to the goddess Athena. The building, made to house the statue of Athena Polias, has in modern scholarship been called the Erechtheion (the sanctuary of Erechtheus or Poseidon) in the belief that Pausanias' description of the Erechtheion applies to this building. However, whether the Erechtheion referred to by Pausanias is indeed the Ionic temple or an entirely different building has become a point of contention in recent decades.In the official decrees the building is referred to as “... το͂ νεὸ το͂ ἐμ πόλει ἐν ο͂ι τὸ ἀρχαῖον ἄγαλμα” (the temple on the Acropolis within which is the ancient statue). In other instances it is referred to as the Temple of the Polias. The joint cult of Athena and Poseidon-Erechtheus appears to have been established on the Acropolis at a very early period, and they were even worshipped in the same temple as may, according to the traditional view, be inferred from two passages in Homer and also from later Greek texts. The extant building is the successor of several temples and buildings on the site. Its precise date of construction is unknown; it has traditionally been thought to have been built from circa 421–406 BC, but more recent scholarship favours a date in the 430s, when it could have been part of the programme of works instigated by Pericles.The Erechtheion is unique in the corpus of Greek temples in that its asymmetrical composition doesn’t conform to the canon of Greek classical architecture. This is attributed either to the irregularity of the site, or to the evolving and complex nature of the cults which the building housed, or it is conjectured to be the incomplete part of a larger symmetrical building. Additionally, its post-classical history of change of use, damage and spoliation has made it one of the more problematic sites in classical archaeology. The precise nature and location of the various religious and architectural elements within the building remain the subject of debate. The temple was nonetheless a seminal example of the classical Ionic style, and was highly influential on later Hellenistic, Roman and Greek Revival architecture.

The Cave Sanctuaries of the Acropolis of Athens are the natural fissures in the rock of the Acropolis hill that were used as sites of worship for deities of the Panhellenic pantheon in antiquity. Traditionally a sharp distinction has been drawn between the state religion practised on the summit of the Acropolis and the cult practice of the shrines on the lower slopes. Recently, however, interest has burgeoned in the individual religious experience or personal piety in Greek society of which these cult sites may be the expression. The proceeding description follows the order of the shrines from the Klepsydra at the northwest face of the Acropolis clockwise via the Peripatos round to the foot of the Nike bastion.

The Old Acropolis Museum (Greek: (Παλαιό) Μουσείο Ακρόπολης (Palaio) Mouseio Akropolis) was an archaeological museum located in Athens, Greece on the archeological site of Acropolis. It is built in a niche at the eastern edge of the rock and most of it lies beneath the level of the hilltop, making it largely invisible. It was considered one of the major archaeological museums in Athens. Due to its limited size, the Greek government decided in the late 1980s to build a new museum. The New Acropolis Museum is now built at the foot of the Acropolis. In June 2007 the old museum closed its doors so that its antiquities could be moved to their new home, which opened on 20 June 2009.

The Church of Our Lady of Athens or Panagia Atheniotissa (Greek: Παναγία η Αθηνιώτισσα, lit. 'Panagia the Athenian') was a Greek Orthodox basilica adapted from the ruins of the Parthenon sometime in the 6th century CE. During the Frankish occupation of Athens the church became the Catholic archiepiscopal cathedral of Our Lady by Papal Bull in 1206. It remained under the Latin liturgy until the departure of the last Florentine Duke of Athens in 1458, when it briefly returned to the Orthodox confession. Sometime after the Ottoman conquest in 1460, the Parthenon was converted into a mosque.