Propylaia (Acropolis of Athens)

The Frankish Tower was a medieval tower built on the Acropolis of Athens by the Franks as part of the palace of the Dukes of Athens. It was demolished by the Greek authorities in 1874, on the initiative and with funding from Heinrich Schliemann.

The Klepsydra of the Acropolis of Athens (not to be confused with the water clock klepsydra of the Agora) is a natural spring on the north-west slope of the Acropolis hill, near the intersection of the Peripatos and the Panathenaic Way. It had been in use as a source of water since prehistoric times but sometime in the fifth century BCE the site was developed with several new structures built. The site consisted of the paved court, a well, the covered well-house, a later Roman apsidal well house (subsequently a Byzantine chapel) and a flight of stone-carved steps up to the Propylaea. There are several references to the source in ancient literature; Hesychius says of it “Klepsydra is a fountain which was formerly called Empedo”. Empedo, argues Parsons, was the name of the spring and Klepsydra the name given to the water made available by the fountain house. It would seem that Empedo was also the name of the tutelary deity of the spring – an Attic nymph. Mention is also made of the fountain by Aristophanes, Pausanias, and Plutarch.It was Stuart and Revett who first identified the free-flowing stream on the face of the hill with the klepsydra mentioned by the ancient authors. During the period of Frankish control, the klepsydra was heavily fortified; however, during the long period of Ottoman occupation the well fell into disuse such that the Turkish garrison of the Acropolis was forced to surrender at the siege of 1822 due to the lack of water. Kyriakos Pittakis rediscovered the source of the spring, leaving the first written account of the site in 1835. Archaeological examination began in earnest with Émile Bturnouf in 1874, and with later development having been cleared from the site Kavvadias uncovered the paved court in 1897. From 1936 to 1940 the American School of Classical Studies at Athens undertook a campaign of excavation, with this the paved court, fountain house and draw basin were fully exposed. It was from this final excavation that it was determined that the spring house had been set into a natural cave which had collapsed sometime in antiquity. A shaft was then opened into the well directly accessible from the Acropolis and a new well house constructed above in the Roman period. From potsherds recovered it was ascertained that the original Greek fountain house was built not earlier than 475–470 BCE.

The Temple of Athena Nike (Greek: Ναός Αθηνάς Νίκης, Naós Athinás Níkis) is a temple on the Acropolis of Athens, dedicated to the goddesses Athena and Nike. Built around 420 BC, the temple is the earliest fully Ionic temple on the Acropolis. It has a prominent position on a steep bastion at the south west corner of the Acropolis to the right of the entrance, the Propylaea. In contrast to the Acropolis proper, a walled sanctuary entered through the Propylaea, the Victory Sanctuary was open, entered from the Propylaea's southwest wing and from a narrow stair on the north. The sheer walls of its bastion were protected on the north, west, and south by the Nike Parapet, named for its frieze of Nikai celebrating victory and sacrificing to their patroness, Athena and Nike. Nike was the goddess of victory in Greek mythology, and Athena was worshipped in this form, representative of being victorious in war. The citizens worshipped the goddesses in hopes of a successful outcome in the long Peloponnesian War fought against the Spartans and allies.

The Pelasgic wall or Pelasgian fortress or Enneapylon (Greek: Εννεαπύλον; nine-gated) was a monument supposed to have been built by the Pelasgians, after levelling the summit of the rock on the Acropolis of Athens. Thucydides and Aristophanes call it "Pelargikon", "Stork wall or place". "Pelargikon" refers to the line of walls at the western foot of the Acropolis. During the time of Thucydides, the wall was said to have stood several meters high with a large, visible fragment at 6 meters broad located on to the south of the present Propylaea and close to the earlier gateway. Today, the beveling can be seen but the foundation of the wall lies below the level of the present hill. The Parian Chronicle mentions that the Athenians expelled the Peisistratids from the "Pelasgikon teichos". Herodotus relates that before the expulsion of the Pelasgians from Attica, the land under Hymettus had been given to them as a dwelling-place in reward for the wall that had once been built around the Acropolis. Said to have been built by the Pelasgians, there are some remains of this wall still evident in modern Athens. The wall was believed to be 6 meters thick according to archaeological remains of the site.

The Brauroneion was the sanctuary of Artemis Brauronia on the Athenian Acropolis, located in the southwest corner of the Acropolis plateau, between the Chalkotheke and the Propylaea in Greece. It was originally dedicated during the reign of Peisistratos. Artemis Brauronia, protector of women in pregnancy and childbirth, had her main sanctuary at Brauron, a demos on the east coast of Attica. The sanctuary on the Acropolis was of an unusual trapezoidal shape and did not contain a formal temple. Instead, a portico or stoa served that function. The stoa measured circa 38 by 6.8 m; it stood in front of the southern Acropolis wall, facing north. At its corners, there were two risalit-like side wings, each about 9.3 m long, the western one facing east and vice versa. North of the east wing stood a further short west-facing stoa. All of the sanctuary's western part, now lost, stood on the remains of the Mycenaean fortification wall. All that remains of the eastern pare are foundations for walls, cut into the bedrock, as well as some very few architectural members of limestone. One of the wings contained the wooden cult statue (xoanon) of the goddess. Women who petitioned Artemis for help habitually dedicated items of clothing, which were draped around the statue. In 346 BC, a second cult statue was erected. According to Pausanias, it was a work by Praxiteles.Pausanias wrote: There is also a sanctuary [at Athens] of Artemis Brauronia (of Brauron); the image is the work of Praxiteles, but the goddess derives her name from the parish of Brauron. The old wooden image is in Brauron, Artemis Tauria (of Tauros) as she is called. Pausanias also records the presence of an over-life-sized bronze horse representing the Trojan Horse. Then there is a sanctuary of the Brauronian Artemis... The horse one sees here, referred to as wooden, is in bronze... But tradition has it that inside that horse were hidden the most valiant of the Greeks, and indeed the design (schema) of the bronze figure fits in well with this story. Menestheus and Teucer are peeping out of it, and behind them also the sons of Theseus. Further evidence is provided by the scholion to Aristophanes mentioning the name of the dedicator, Chairedemos. This is corroborated by the survival of the base of the sculpture on the Acropolis, which is inscribed with the names of Chairedemos and its sculptor Strongylion. The reference in Aristophanes allows for a terminus ante quem of the statue of 415/414.The entrance to the small sacred precinct, near its northeast corner, is still marked by seven rock-cut steps. They, and its northern enclosure, were probably created by Mnesicles during the building of the Propylaea. The date of the complex in its final shape is unclear, but a date around 430 BC, similar to that of the adjacent Propylaea, is commonly assumed. If still in use by the 4th-century, the temple would have been closed during the persecution of pagans in the late Roman Empire, when the Christian Emperors issued edicts prohibiting non-Christian worship.

The Beulé Gate (French pronunciation: [bœ'le]) is a fortified gate, constructed in the Roman period, leading to the Propylaia of the Acropolis of Athens. It was constructed almost entirely from repurposed materials (spolia) taken from the Choragic Monument of Nikias, a monument built in the fourth century BCE and demolished between the second and fourth centuries CE. The dedicatory inscription from Nikias's monument is still visible in the entablature of the Beulé Gate. The gate was integrated into the Post-Herulian Wall, a late Roman fortification built around the Acropolis in the years following the city's sack by the Germanic Heruli people in 267 or early 268 CE. Its construction marked the beginning of a new phase in the Acropolis's use, in which it came to be seen more as a potential defensive position than in the religious terms that had marked its use in the classical period. During the medieval period, the gate was further fortified and closed off, before being built over with a bastion in Ottoman times. The monument was discovered by the French archaeologist Charles Ernest Beulé in 1852, and excavated between 1852 and 1853. Its discovery was greeted enthusiastically in France among the scholarly community and the press, though archaeologists and Greek commentators criticised the aggressive means – particularly the use of explosives – by which Beulé had carried out the excavation. In modern times, the gate has served primarily as an exit for tourists from the Acropolis.

The siege of the Acropolis took place on 23–29 September 1687, as the Venetian army under Otto Wilhelm Königsmarck laid siege to the Acropolis of Athens, held by the Ottoman garrison of the city. The siege resulted in the destruction of a large part of the Parthenon, which the Ottomans used as a gunpowder store.

The Athena Promachos (Ἀθηνᾶ Πρόμαχος, "Athena who fights in the front line") was a colossal bronze statue of Athena sculpted by Pheidias, which stood between the Propylaea and the Parthenon on the Acropolis of Athens. Athena was the tutelary deity of Athens and the goddess of wisdom and warriors. Pheidias also sculpted two other figures of Athena on the Acropolis, the huge gold and ivory ("chryselephantine") cult image of Athena Parthenos in the Parthenon and the Lemnian Athena. The designation Athena Promachos is not attested before a dedicatory inscription of the early fourth century CE; Pausanias (1.28.2) referred to it as "the great bronze Athena" on the Acropolis.

The Chalkotheke (Greek for "bronze store") was a structure on the Athenian Acropolis, Greece. Its name and function are only known from 4th century BC inscriptions. One decree orders the listing of all objects stored in the Chalkotheke and the erection of a stele inscribed with that list in front of the building.Remains of a structure discovered to the east of the sanctuary of Artemis Brauronia and immediately to the southwest of the Parthenon have been suggested to be those of the Chalkotheke. Only scant limestone foundations and rock-cut foundation trenches survive. The building stood in front of the southern Acropolis wall and was circa 43 m long and 14 m wide, fronted on its northern long side by a portico of 4.5 m width. To make room for that portico, the southernmost portion of the rock-cut steps leading up to the west facade of the Parthenon had to be cut away. Thus, the portico is assumed to have been an early fourth century BC addition, while the main part of the structure is thought to be roughly contemporary with the Parthenon, i.e. to date to the mid-fifth century. A major renovation appears to have taken place during Roman times, as indicated by numerous fragments of architectural members that are definitely Roman in date and have dimensions matching those of the Chalkotheke.

The Arrephorion or House of the Arrephoroi is a building conjectured to have been on the Acropolis of Athens based on a passage in Pausanias. The discovery of the foundations of a substantial building on the north-west edge of the Acropolis has led to the identification of this structure with the Arrephorion.Pausanias reports that: I was much amazed at something which is not generally known, and so I will describe the circumstances. Two maidens dwell not far from the temple of Athena Polias, called by the Athenians Bearers of the Sacred Offerings. For a time they live with the goddess, but when the festival comes round they perform at night the following rites. Having placed on their heads what the priestess of Athena gives them to carry—neither she who gives nor they who carry have any knowledge what it is—the maidens descend by the natural underground passage that goes across the adjacent precincts, within the city, of Aphrodite in the Gardens. They leave down below what they carry and receive something else which they bring back covered up. These maidens they henceforth let go free, and take up to the Acropolis others in their place. Additionally, Plutarch remarks on the existence of a ballcourt adjacent to the house. The physical remains fit what we know of the House of the Arrephoroi but the evidence is still circumstantial that this was in fact the residence of the Arrephoroi.The dimensions of the building are 12.2 m square, and it was erected on a foundation of limestone blocks. It was divided into a south-facing portico of 4.4 m deep and a single rectangular room of approximately 8m by 12m. The terrace immediately around the building is an artificial one created by infill, which along with the foundation is dated to the last half of the 5th century or contemporary with the Erechtheion.The reconstruction of the architecture is controversial. While Dörpfeld assumed a south-facing front with two columns in antis - a conjecture that has recently been taken up again - four columns between the antae were later reconstructed. However, since no other four-column antae structures are known, a reconstruction with a six-column prostyle porch was recently proposed. Because of the wide foundations, it can be assumed that there was a step substructure, a crepidoma, on which the actual building stood. Only a gable with a corresponding roof can have risen above the six-columned, prostyle portico. Older reconstructions with a hipped, pyramidal roof would therefore have to be discarded. The order of the columns in the building is unclear. An Ionic order is to be considered, although most available reconstructions assume a Doric order.

The Acropolis of Athens (Ancient Greek: ἡ Ἀκρόπολις τῶν Ἀθηνῶν, romanized: hē Akropolis tōn Athēnōn; Modern Greek: Ακρόπολη Αθηνών, romanized: Akrópoli Athinón) is an ancient citadel located on a rocky outcrop above the city of Athens, Greece, and contains the remains of several ancient buildings of great architectural and historical significance, the most famous being the Parthenon. The word Acropolis is from the Greek words ἄκρον (akron, "highest point, extremity") and πόλις (polis, "city"). The term acropolis is generic and there are many other acropoleis in Greece. During ancient times the Acropolis of Athens was also more properly known as Cecropia, after the legendary serpent-man Cecrops, the supposed first Athenian king. While there is evidence that the hill was inhabited as early as the fourth millennium BC, it was Pericles (c. 495–429 BC) in the fifth century BC who coordinated the construction of the buildings whose present remains are the site's most important ones, including the Parthenon, the Propylaea, the Erechtheion and the Temple of Athena Nike. The Parthenon and the other buildings were seriously damaged during the 1687 siege by the Venetians during the Morean War when gunpowder being stored by the then Turkish rulers in the Parthenon was hit by a Venetian bombardment and exploded.

The Pandroseion (pronounced: panδrosion, Greek: Πανδρόσειον) was a sanctuary dedicated to Pandrosus, one of the daughters of Cecrops I, the first king of Attica Greece, located on the Acropolis of Athens. It occupied the space adjacent to the Erechtheum and the old Temple of Athena Polias. The sanctuary was a walled trapezoidal courtyard containing the altar of Zeus Herkeios (protector of the hearth, of the courtyard) under the sacred Olive Tree planted by Athena. At the west was an entrance stoa from the Propylea. In the northeast corner was an elaborate entrance into the north porch and the entire Etrechtheion complex. At the east, there was also a small opening through which the Thalassa of Poseidon could be viewed. The south-east corner gave access to what some thought was the tomb of Cecrops. The sanctuary also contained the sacred olive tree which was presented by Athena to the city of Athens, after her victory over Poseidon in the contest for the land of Attica.