What Is The Athens Agora Museum?
The ancient Agora of Athens is the best-known example of an ancient Greek agora. It was initially used as a commercial assembly or residential gathering place. It is a two-storied portico replete with columns that was built by the king of Pergamon, Attalos II, to Athens in the 2nd century BC.
The Agora in Athens is located to the northwest of the Acropolis and bordered on the south by the hill of the Areopagus and on the west by the hill known as the Agoraios Kolonos (market hill).
The American School of Classical Studies in Athens has been excavating the ancient Athenian agora since 1931 under the direction of T. Leslie Shear, Sr. Today, under the direction of John McK Camp they continue to do so.
During the 1950s the Hellenistic Stoa of Attalos was reconstructed on the east side of the agora which today serves as a museum, storage, and office space for the excavation team.
The exhibits and collections in the museum that is housed in the Stoa of Attalos relates to the Athenian democracy. It includes bronze, clay, and glass objects as well as sculptures, coins, and inscriptions from the 7th to the 5th century BC. It also has pottery items of the Byzantine period and some date to the Turkish occupation.
Works of art in the exhibitions in the museum describes the private and public life of people in ancient Athens. A new sculpture exhibition was added to the museum in 2012 which includes portraits from the Athenian Agora excavation. This revolves around portraits of idealized gods, wealthy Roman citizens of the 1st and 2nd century AD, officially honoured people of the city, works of art from private art schools of late antiquity, and 3rd century citizens.
History
The Stoa of Attalos was rebuilt in the 1950’s with the purpose of storing the artifacts unearthed through the excavations in the Agora. It added a museum where the most important items could be exhibited.
Items in the museum date back to the stone age, with everyday objects and artifacts related to the Athenian democratic functions during the Classical period. Many of the important artifacts are accompanied with large boards with text that provide explanations as well as reproduction drawings.
Inaugurated in 2012, the exhibition on the 1st floor of the Stoa of Attalos, presents a representative collection of Athenian sculptures, with a special focus on the important group of portraits from the Athenian Agora excavations.
Interest For Today
The Athens Agora Museum is a small museum, prone to getting crowded very quickly. The museum’s entrance portrays a beautiful area in Ancient Greece. This part of the Stoa would be busy with merchants bartering with buyers behind their benches.
Originally, the facade was painted red and blue and this was where people gathered to watch the Panathenaic Procession. It was also a shopping arcade, and the word stoa is still used today for this purpose.
On display in the public galleries of the stoa is a selection of the many objects recovered in the past 75 years, showing the use of the area from 3000 BC to 1500 AD.
The exhibition in the Museum gallery holds archaeological finds coming from the systematic excavations of the American School of Classical Studies in the area and dated from the Neolithic to the Post-byzantine and Ottoman periods.
The exhibition is organized in chronological and thematic units that reveal aspects of the public and private life in ancient Athens. The earliest antiquities, vases, potsherds, weapons and terracotta figurines, dating from the Neolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age and Geometric period, come from wells and tombs excavated in the area of the Athenian Agora and its surroundings.
Among the most important exhibits associated with the various departments of civic life and the institutions of the Athenian Democracy are official clay measures, a clay water-clock, bronze weights, official jurors identification tags, a fragment of a marble allotment machine, official bronze ballots, and potsherds inscribed with names of illustrious political personalities of the 5th century BC.
A marble stele decorated with a relief show the people of Athens being introduced to democracy, inscribed with a law against tyranny passed by the people of Athens in 336 BC. It is one of the special finds exhibited in the museum.
There are also fine specimens of black-figured and red-figured pottery. Some are attributed to renowned vase painters. There are kitchen and table ware, lamps, terracotta figurines, coins, and jewellery.
On display is also a collection of miniature Roman copies of famous statues and several particularly fine portrait busts and heads of the Roman period.
The newest exhibition in the museum has been organized in six units:
- Idealized figures of gods and mortals, containing Late Classical-Hellenistic works of the 4th and 3rd century BC
- The Athenian workshops reproduce Classical works, including Roman copies of Classical works of the 1st -2nd century AD
- Roman portraits of the 1st to 2nd century AD, presenting images of wealthy Athenian citizen.
- The city honours state officials, containing herms bearing portraits of state officials of the 2nd and 3rdcentury AD
- Roman portraits presenting portraits of prominent citizens in Roman Athens of the 3rd century AD.
- Collections of sculptures enhancing the private schools of late antiquity.
This exhibition area offers a unique approach to the architecture of the ancient stoa. It also provides a view of the Agora, the Pnyx and the Acropolis, which is useful for comprehending the historical landscape and the ancient topography of the area.
The museum plays a part in being the centre of research of the Greek cultural heritage.
Hours of Business
- Every day from 08:00 to 15:00
Tickets
- Full price €10, Reduced: €5
Tickets are valid for the archaeological site and the museum of the Ancient Agora of Athens. It can be purchased at the ticket offices on site or online.
Free admission days
- 6 March (in memory of Melina Mercouri)
- 18 April (International Monuments Day)
- 18 May (International Museums Day)
- The last weekend of September annually (European Heritage Days)
- 28 October
- Every first Sunday from 1 November to 31 March
Contact details
- Address: Adrianou 24, Τ.Κ. 10555, Athens (Prefecture of Attiki)
- Coordinates: 37°58′30″N 23°43′21″E
- Telephone: +30 210 3210185, 3214825, 3210180
- Fax: 210 3210196
- Email: efaath@culture.gr
Both levels of the Museum of the Ancient Agora at the Stoa of Attalos are wheelchair accessible. There are also toilets for individuals with disabilities within the building.
At the information desk, tactile site plans and brochures in Braille in Greek and English are available for visually impaired visitors.
How To Get There?
The museum can be reach by metro, bus, car or by foot. If walking to the museum go up from Monastiraki Square and take Adrianou Street for a 5-minute walk to the Ancient Agora where the museum is located.
From the Thissio Metro Station, it will only take a couple of minutes on Adrianou Street to reach the Agora.
