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Peripatos (Acropolis of Athens)

Ancient Greek buildings and structures in AthensLandmarks in AthensLate Classical GreeceMonuments and memorials in Greece
Plan Acropolis of Athens colored
Plan Acropolis of Athens colored

The Peripatos (Ancient Greek: περίπατος, lit. 'walkway') is an ancient pathway that girds the Acropolis in Athens and intersects with the Panathenaic way on the north slope. It connects the shrines that are interspersed around the Acropolis hill. A reading of Thucydides 2.17, which records that the shrines were erected within an area which it was forbidden to build or quarry called the Pelasgian ground, suggests that the peripatos follows the line of the archaic and now vanished Pelasgic wall.An inscription on a boulder of acropolis limestone from the north slope of the hill is the only epigraphic evidence of the pathway. It reads "Length of the Peripatos: five stades and eighteen feet." This inscription is dated to the fourth century BCE, though it is possible that the path had been cleared and in use at least since the Periklean building programme by when the cave sanctuaries had been established. Pausanias in the second century CE makes mention of using the road to examine the klepsydra and the Apollo cave.Work was undertaken to restore the Peripatos beginning in 1977.

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Peripatos (Acropolis of Athens)
Αρχαίος Περίπατος, Athens

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N 37.97166667 ° E 23.72861111 °
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Ιερό της Αγλαύρου

Αρχαίος Περίπατος
105 58 Athens (3rd District of Athens)
Attica, Greece
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Anafiotika
Anafiotika

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"...

Choragic Monument of Thrasyllos
Choragic Monument of Thrasyllos

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.

Bema of Phaidros
Bema of Phaidros

The Bema of Phaidros is the marble platform created in the third century CE that served as stage front to the Theatre of Dionysos in Athens. It is decorated with a Neo-Attic Roman sculpture of the Hadrianic or Antonine period, this sculpture was dismantled sometime in antiquity, moved from an unknown location, and rebuilt into the bema of the Theatre by Phaidros, archon of Athens. Four stone reliefs decorate the stage front illustrating scenes from the life of Dionysos they are: 1) The birth of Dionysos, 2) the entrance of Dionysos into Attica, 3) the sacred marriage of Dionysos and the Basilinna and 4) the enthronement of Dionysos. These scenes are framed by crouching Silenoi. The sculpture, reading the viewer's from right to left, begins with a scene that can be taken to be the birth of Dionysos. It consists of four figures beginning with a semi-draped seated figure who is likely Zeus facing him is a youth holding a small child, presumed to be Hermes and the infant Dionysos at the moment of his second birth from the thing of Zeus. Framing the scene are two nude male figures each holding a shield, these have been conjectured to be either korybantes or kouretes. The next slab represents the bestowing of the gift of wine, the introduction of the worship of Dionysos to Attica and alludes to the beginnings of tragedy. Again there are four figures; reading right to left they are, a young male figure in a chlamys and lion skin gesturing to his right. Immediately next is a figure identified by his attributes of grapevine, leopard skin and cothurni as Dionysos. Between him and the adjacent figure to his right is a small altar, this latter figure may be Ikarios accompanied by his dog Maera and a tethered goat. To the viewer's left is a draped female, possibly a maenad, sometimes identified as Erigone On the third slab are three figures with a fourth figure lost over time, they are conjectured to be, from left to right, Tyche Dionysos and Basilinna. The final slab on the viewer's far left consists perhaps of, from left to right, Tyche, Theseus, Basilianna, and Dionysos enthroned.It is evident from the way in which the sculptures have been cut down in size to fit their present placement, and for chronological reasons, that they are reused, secondary material. No conclusive solution has been put forward for the original date or location of the sculptures, though it has been suggested that they may have been meant for the scaenae frons of the high pulpitum built during the first half of the second century.