Stretching across the open ground at the northern foot of the Acropolis below the Areopagus Hill, the Ancient Agora of Athens was the principal civic, commercial and political square of ancient Athens from the sixth century BC through to the Roman period. The site provides one of the most evocative open-air archaeological landscapes anywhere in Greece and was the principal everyday gathering place of the citizens of the classical Athenian democracy. The Agora was first laid out as a public square in the sixth century BC by the Athenian statesmen Solon and Cleisthenes as part of the wider development of the early democratic constitution. The progressive abandonment of the earlier political square at the south-eastern foot of the Acropolis, where the early Athenian kings had held court, allowed the development of a new central civic space at a more accessible location halfway between the harbour district of Piraeus to the south-west and the residential districts to the east. The classical Agora reached its developed form during the fifth century BC at the height of Athenian power. The principal buildings around the central square included the Tholos, the round administrative office of the rotating executive committee of the Council of Five Hundred, the Bouleuterion or council chamber, the Royal Stoa where the religious laws were displayed, the Strategeion or military headquarters and a series of long colonnaded stoas that provided shade and shelter around the open central space. The most prominent surviving building on the site is the Temple of Hephaestus on the western edge of the Agora, completed in around 415 BC and substantially preserved with its original walls, columns, frieze and roof. The temple is the best-preserved classical Greek temple anywhere in the country and provides one of the most direct experiences available of the original architectural form of a Greek Doric building of the classical period. The Stoa of Attalos on the eastern side of the Agora was rebuilt in 1953 by the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, working from the surviving foundations and from the standard architectural conventions of the second-century BC Greek stoa. The reconstructed building houses the Agora Museum, which displays the principal artefacts recovered during the systematic American excavations of the site between 1931 and the present day, providing the principal museum interpretation of the everyday life of the classical Athenian citizens.

Type: Tourist Attraction

Address: Adrianou 24, Athens, Greece