Spouses' Tour

The temple of Poseidon has stood silently for thousands of years at the very tip of Cape Sounio as a reminder of respect for mighty Poseidon and his capricious ocean. The temple's proportions are humble, and yet the structure is elevated in a showmanship manner through the massive foundation that raises it so it can be easily spotted by sailors from afar. The marble Doric columns atop the rugged rocks that form the cape of Sounio impose a statement of strength, durability and serenity.

Cape Sounio has been recognized since prehistoric times as a special place of worship, and was an important sanctuary during the Greek Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic periods. There are two sanctuaries present on the cape: the sanctuary of Poseidon and the sanctuary of Athena; two gods that were held in high esteem by the ancient Athenians.

The location of cape Sounio at the tip of Attica rendered it as a location of strategic military importance, and thus it was fortified with a mighty wall and guarded constantly by a garrison which ensured that the shipping lanes to Athens remained open. It is also most likely the place that Aegeus plunged to his death after he glimpsed the dark sails of Theseus' ship approaching, thus naming the Aegean Sea after his legend.

Until the 17th century, foreign travellers visiting the Acropolis depicted the classical buildings as being relatively intact. In the mid-17th century the Propylaia was accidentally blown up while being used as a gunpowder store. Thirty years later, the Ottoman occupiers dismantled the neighbouring Temple of Athena Nike to use its materials to strengthen the fortification of the Acropolis. The most fatal year for the Acropolis was 1687, when many of the building’s architectural members were blown into the air and fell in heaps around the Hill of the Acropolis, caused by a bomb from Venetian forces. Foreign visitors to the Acropolis would search through the rubble and take fragments of the fallen sculptures as their souvenirs.

The new Acropolis museum was conceived some 25 years ago to replace smaller museums and provide a suitably impressive space to display the masterpieces of the Archaic and Classical periods, and to provide a reconstruction of the how the most important sculptures of the Parthenon would have looked in context.

It is built on the archaeological site of Makrygianni dating from Archaic to Early Christian Athens (excavations can be seen through glass panels in the floor). Their discovery delayed building for fifteen years, and the msuemum was not finally completed until 2007. The modern glass and concrete building, at the foot of the ancient Acropolis, houses sculptures from the golden age of Athenian democracy and offers panoramic views of the stone citadel where they came from.

A walk through the museum’s galleries is a walk through history. The upper floor is a reconstruction of the frieze itself as a narrative. Their reconstruction in the Acropolis Museum is based on several elements that remain in Athens and plaster copies of sections held in London, Paris and Berlin. The Greek government had requested the return of the largest section of the originals - the Marbles purchased by Lord Elgin for the British Museum in London – for the museum. This remains contentious and there were no government officials from Britain at the museum’s grand opening.

Afterwards a walk through the Plaka Area, the oldest section of Athens. Most of the streets have been closed to traffic, though you should still keep a watchful eye for motorcycles. At one time it was the nightclub district, but was changed for the Olympics and is now an area of restaurants, Jewelry stores, and cafes. The Plaka is full of street musicians and flower girls from the area of Xanthi in north-eastern Greece. Lunch in a local Taverna.