Leslie: Alex commented on the amount of tourists and the number of languages spoken on the Akropolis. We realized that there isn't any single place in the US that is like the Acropolis, because there isn't a single place that every tourist to the US must see, the way the Acropolis is to Athens. Even in a city like New York, not everyone goes to the Empire State building, or Times Square. Perhaps the Metropolitan Museum of Art is like that. It is also the kind of place that most people go to only one time because it requires a lot of energy (uphill on foot!), it is hot, and it is expensive. For most people it is an icon, really: a place of pilgrimage, something to cross off a bucket list.
So this is perhaps my third time up. Here is what I noticed:
#1. The View: I think about how much work it is to get up here to make this cultural pilgrimage, and then I think about those who didn't have the benefit of an airplane and then the metro. Even my rich European Grand Tourists took the boat and then horses and then walked. Although they had servants to carry their TRUNKS and sometimes even furniture, it was still no picnic as Edward Lear attested with his details like the number of mosquitoes or bedbugs he killed in the night. And then I think about those who brought the monumental building blocks, and I stop thinking about my pedometer (which, for the record, reads 8.5 miles today)!
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| The hill in the center was our first stop, and now we are way above! |
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| Lykavitos hill, where we will go on our last night in Athens. |
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| Plaka from the Akropolis: you can see the old city boundary by looking the curve of the streets in the middle distance. |
#2. An Iconic View: I've seen many images of the Acropolis, and this is one of the images that have been shown over and over and over making the Parthenon an icon.
#3. Details: the first is the Caryatids. I love the story of the crying maidens. One of these statues was taken, and the story is that when the workers returned to get a second, they statues began to scream as if they were in terrible agony, terrifying the workers who refused to remove another. They can still be heard crying on certain nights for their lost sister.
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| The caryatids |
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| I love these two leaning together for support. Who can blame them for their exhaustion? |
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| A lion guarding the exit. |
#4. The ordering of the ruins: Piles of like objects. Ionic column capitals here...
...and Corinthian capitals in a pile next door!
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