Athens: Acropolis Museum

Finally made it to this magnificent museum.

The Parthenon Gallery

The Archaic Acropolis Gallery

"Even when (if?) the Acropolis Museum is built, there will still be a void at its heart, because the greater part of the Parthenon sculptures, those which are in the British Museum, will not be in it" -

Sir Michael Llewellyn Smith, "Athens" (Cities of the Imagination, Signal Books, Oxford, 2004) - highly recommended - I am using it as my cultural history/guide book whilst in Athens.

The last poem Thomas Hardy published during his lifetime (The Times, Christmas Eve, 1927):

Christmas in the Elgin Room

British Museum: Early Last Century

‘What is the noise that shakes the night,

And seems to soar to the Pole-star height?’

– ‘Christmas bells,

The watchman tells

Who walks this hall that blears us captives with its blight.’

‘And what, then, mean such clangs, so clear?’

‘– ’Tis said to have been a day of cheer,

And source of grace

To the human race

Long ere their woven sails winged us to exile here.

‘We are those whom Christmas overthrew

Some centuries after Pheidias knew

How to shape us

And bedrape us

And to set us in Athena’s temple for men’s view.

‘O it is sad now we are sold –

We gods! for Borean people’s gold,

And brought to the gloom

Of this gaunt room

Which sunlight shuns, and sweet Aurore but enters cold.

‘For all these bells, would I were still

Radiant as on Athenai’s Hill.’

– ‘And I, and I!’

The others sigh,

‘Before this Christ was known, and we had men’s good will.’

Thereat old Helios could but nod,

Throbbed, too, the Ilissus River-god,

And the torsos there

Of deities fair,

Whose limbs were shards beneath some Acropolitan clod:

Demeter too, Poseidon hoar,

Persephone, and many more

Of Zeus’ high breed, –

All loth to heed

What the bells sang that night which shook them to the core.

1905 and 1926



Lord Byron, The Curse of Minerva


Building the Ancient City: Athens (BBC 4)


An introduction to the Parthenon and its sculptures, British Museum

Past Exhibition at the Acropolis Museum: Δωδώνη. Το μαντείο των ήχων / Dodona. The oracle of sounds

Update, October 2019: Athens to install new lift at the Acropolis for disabled visitors, Greek City Times