Erasmus blog Athens

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The Acropolis 1

The next day, we got to see an absolute highlight in Athens: The Acropolis! Having been settled since the Neolithic Age, it was used by the kings of Mycene and later re-designed under Pericles by Phidias, a genius architect in the 5th century BC. Walking up to the...

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Areopagus - The City Council

This simple rock on a hill above the city of Athens is the orator's stage for the Areopagus, the historical city council of Athens that existed since the 6th century BC. Nobles and magistrates (later also more citizens) would gather here to decide on the state's...

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Temple of Olympian Zeus

The Olympieion (Temple of Olympian Zeus) was the largest temple in Greece and took over 600 years to complete (from the 6th century BC with some breaks until the 2nd century AD). It must have been majestic, but fell to a barbarian invasion in the 3rd century AD and was...

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Roman Agora: Hadrian's Heritage

Time to leave the musea and go outside again! We walked quite a bit as you can see: The Orthodox church close to the Kerameikos is on the hill to the right, the Greek agora to our feet on the left, and here we were overseeing it all. However, soon we went down to see...

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Agora Museum

The Agora Museum close to the Stoa offers some little highlights important for understanding Ancient Greece: Ceramic shards like these were incised and used for voting in the new democratic system, also for ostracising (banning) people that were considered dangerous....

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The Stoa (Shopping Mall of Philosophy)

Behind the trees of the marketplace, you see the Stoa Poikile (colourful shopping mall) where the popular philosophy of Stoicism originated in the 3rd century BC (Zeno of Citium). It focuses on a divine principle (logos) as the principle of a passive material world...

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Marketplace (Agora) and Temple

After crawling all the musea described in my last post, we finally headed out onto the marketplace (agora). It was a cultural and political centre (apart from the Acropolis) from the 5th century BC onwards. It is a very green place today, and you can see the Acropolis...

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Kerameikos Museum

Leaving the Kerameikos cemetery, we went to the ceramics museum close by. It was small but showed some fine examples of Ancient Greek ceramics. It showed not only amphoras and ritual vessels, but also toys as gifts for deceased children. Remember that child mortality...

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Kerameikos Cemetery

You could spend hours, no - days, in all the musea of Athens! However, our group also had plans for outside to get the blood flowing ... we went to see the Kerameikos, cemetery of Athens' ancient noble families. The geometric structure of the Classical Period is...

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National Museum of Archeology Athens - Hellenistic Period

The Hellenistic Period (4th century BC - first few centuries AD) was a period of profound political change: The poleis (city-states) gave way to the empire of Alexander the Great and his successors, spanning from Sicily to India, where Stoic Greek philosophy met...

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National Museum of Archeology - Classical Period 2

The reconstruction of the Pantheon reliefs of the Acropolis in colour was an important work as the originals were partially destroyed by wind and weather, partly by some Christians (!) as they thought they had to do away with pagan superstitions. Also, buildings and...

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National Museum of Archeology Athens - Classical Period

The Classical Period (5th - 4th century BC) saw extremely important inventions in politics (an early for of demcracy), art and architecture, literature and theatre, philosophy (Plato) and science (Aristotle) that shaped nothing less than the course of Western history...

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National Museum of Archeology Athens - Archaic Period

The Archaic Period (ca. 750 - 500 BC) saw a variety of changes: The structure of the "polis" (city-state) with an army of hoplites emerged, accompanied by various intellectual achievements such as poetry and drama (A. Snodgrass). Minted coins showed man conquering...

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National Museum of Archeology Athens - Bronze Age II

Although the Bronze Age was famous for warlike values and competing nobility, as Homer's "Iliad" tells us, also other cultural achievements were made in that time. The Linear script on these clay tablets is the forerunner of the Greek alphabet, and as far as I know,...

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National Museum of Archeology - Bronze Age

The Bronze Age in Europe (ca 3200-800 BC) was a very important period for the development of many cultures by crafts and trade. The Minoans in Crete were a famous example ... but in the end, preferring luxury goods over staple food lead to problems in the archaic...

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National Museum of Archeology - Insular Culture

After the Stone Age department, a small collection of artifacts from the Greek islands awaited the visitor: A relief of a war chariot attacking an enemy with spirals as smolbs for the wind. Ivory statues of musicians playing a lyre (harp) and an aulos, a double flute....

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National Museum of Archeology - Stone Age 2

The second part about the Stone Age in Greece: Female figurines made from clay with exaggerated sexual features were a widespread artifact used as bringers of fertility. Similar "Venus" figures were found in Germany, too, see the "Venus of Willendorf". Some everyday...

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The National Museum of Archeology Athens - Stone Age

Our first main attraction as a study group was the National Museum of Archeology in Athens, the biggest archeological collection in Greece and famous worldwide. My next posts will structure the exhibition in a chronological way, piece by piece. In the Stona Age, people...

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The Panathenaic Stadium "Kallimarmaro"

Ancient Greece is known for good physical education culminating in the Olympic games and pankration (kind of ancient MMA). A highlight I saw in Athens before meeting my group was the Panathinaiko Stadium, also called Kallimarmaro because it is the world's only stadium...

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Athens Beach

On the next day, I was still waiting for the others to arrive, and so I decided to go to the beach not far away from the hotel. I just had to take a tram for 30 minutes, and there it was! On this sunny and warm day, many people were there ... a special feature: You...

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