This is the Olympieion — a temple that took over six centuries to build, longer than most empires lasted. The Athenian tyrants began it expecting to create the greatest temple on earth, but dynasty after dynasty fell before it was done. It was Hadrian who finally completed it in the second century AD, with a hundred and four columns and a cult statue that rivalled anything in the ancient world. Just a century later, a Germanic raid stripped it bare, and it was abandoned to the stone-robbers. Sixteen columns still stand, each one marking a different failed builder.
Audio guide Athens
Tella is a free audio guide for any place on Earth. Here are 30 places in Athens worth a story. Open one on the map and hear it read aloud in English, or take the Android app on a walk and let it narrate whatever you pass.
Places worth a story
National and Kapodistrian University of Athens
university in Athens, Greece
Temple of Athena Nike
ancient Greek temple built in the fifth century CE on the Acropolis of Athens in honor of Athena as the goddess of victory, located in Athens Municipality, Greece
Photo: Jebulon · CC0
National Archaeological Museum of Athens
museum in Athens, Greece
National Library of Greece
national library in Athens, Greece
Acropolis Museum
museum in Athens, Greece
When the Acropolis Museum opened in 2009, it had a demand built into its very design: glass floors over the ruins of an early Christian neighbourhood, so the past is visible even before you reach the first gallery. The building itself was a statement too, its top floor turned to align perfectly with the Parthenon a few hundred metres away. Its collection runs from the Bronze Age to Byzantine times, but the prize display was always meant to be the Parthenon marbles — the ones Elgin took to London and Greece still wants back.
Photo: Yair-haklai · CC BY-SA 4.0
Tower of the Winds
a Roman tower in Athens that once housed an early weather vane, large clepsydra, and multiple sundials to function as an early clocktower
Syntagma Square
square in Athens, Greece
Syntagma Square got its name from a constitution — the one King Otto was forced to grant in 1843, after a crowd gathered under the palace windows and refused to leave. The square still does that job. Nearly every major protest and celebration in modern Greece passes through it, between the parliament building and the tomb of the unknown soldier, watched by the evzones guarding it. Underneath, the busiest metro station in Athens keeps the square fed with people. The name means "constitution", and for nearly two centuries this has been where Greeks come to test it.
Photo: C messier · CC BY-SA 4.0
Odeon of Herodes Atticus
ancient theater in Athens Acropolis
Since its 1950s restoration, the Odeon of Herodes Atticus has been the main venue of the Athens Festival, hosting everyone from Maria Callas to Frank Sinatra and Sting. The theatre was originally completed in AD 161 by the wealthy Athenian Herodes Atticus, who built it in memory of his wife, Aspasia Annia Regilla. Its steep semicircle of stone seats against the Acropolis slope holds nearly five thousand people, and the stage still performs under the open Attic sky.
Hadrian's Library
Roman library in Athens
Photo: Carole Raddato from FRANKFURT, Germany · CC BY-SA 2.0
Metropolitan Cathedral of Athens
church building in Athens, Attica Region, Greece
Photo: C messier · CC BY-SA 4.0
Athena Promachos
ancient sculpture of Phidias in Athens Acropolis
Choragic Monument of Lysicrates
ancient Greek choragic monument in Athens
Photo: C messier · CC BY-SA 4.0
Old Royal Palace
building of the Hellenic Parliament, formerly a royal palace
Apostolos Nikolaidis Stadium
football stadium
Photo: The original uploader was Galis at German Wikipedia . · CC BY-SA 2.0 de
Stories are written by an AI from public map and encyclopaedia data and may contain mistakes.