Explore Athens

The National Archaeological Museum on Patission Street holds finds from sites across Greece, from prehistory to late antiquity, in a neoclassical building completed in 1889. Among its exhibits are the gold Mask of Agamemnon from Mycenae, the bronze god from Cape Artemision, Cycladic figurines and fragments of the Antikythera mechanism.

The Ancient Agora below the north side of the Acropolis was the public square of classical Athens, used for markets, assemblies and law courts. The site includes the Doric Temple of Hephaestus from the 5th century BC and the Stoa of Attalos, rebuilt in the 1950s, which houses the Museum of the Ancient Agora.

The Acropolis is the rocky citadel above central Athens, a sanctuary of the goddess Athena since the 8th century BC. Its main buildings date from the 5th century BC under Pericles: the Parthenon, the Propylaea gateway, the Erechtheion with its Caryatid porch and the small Temple of Athena Nike.

The Museum of Cycladic Art was founded in 1986 for the collection of Nikolaos and Dolly Goulandris. It shows marble figurines and vessels of the Cycladic islands from the 3rd millennium BC, along with ancient Greek and Cypriot art, and uses the neoclassical Stathatos Mansion on Vasilissis Sofias Avenue for temporary exhibitions.

The Temple of Olympian Zeus, or Olympieion, was begun in the 6th century BC and completed under the Roman emperor Hadrian in the 2nd century AD. Of its 104 Corinthian columns, 15 still stand and a 16th lies where it fell in 1852. Hadrian's Arch stands at the edge of the site.

The Byzantine and Christian Museum on Vasilissis Sofias Avenue was founded in 1914 and later moved to Villa Ilissia, built in 1848 by Stamatios Kleanthis for the Duchess of Plaisance. It holds more than 25,000 objects from the 3rd century AD to the late Middle Ages: icons, frescoes, manuscripts, textiles and pottery. A new wing was added in 2004.

The Panathenaic Stadium, also called Kallimarmaro, is a horseshoe-shaped stadium built entirely of marble. Laid out around 330 BC and rebuilt in marble by Herodes Atticus in the 2nd century AD, it was restored for the first modern Olympic Games of 1896. Visitors walk the track, climb the stands and see a small museum of Olympic torches and posters.