ACROPOLIS MUSEUM

A first architectural competition was launched in 1976. Ten years later, Melina Mercouri relaunched the project as part of her campaign to provide a fitting setting for the Parthenon friezes in Greece. While British ambassador to Istanbul, Lord Elgin (1766-1841) had snatched some of the Parthenon's finest treasures, still on display to this day at the British Museum, which has "custody" of them and is still opposed to their return. Designed by Franco-Swiss architect Bernard Tschumi, the new Acropolis Museum opened in June 2009.

This gigantic structure of glass, steel and concrete is in direct visual contact with the sacred rock. Its bay windows skilfully reflect the Acropolis, visible almost throughout the visit. As soon as visitors arrive, they discover the city's archaeological remains on stilts and in the basement. The collections are then organized into five themes: the slopes of the Acropolis, the Archaic Acropolis, the Parthenon, the monuments of the Classical Acropolis and the "other collections". Everywhere, the building makes the most of natural light to highlight its 4,000 or so exhibits.

On the first floor, visitors can admire antiquities from the Acropolis and remains from ancient Athens, attesting to occupation of the area around 3000 BC. The second floor features objects from the Archaic period and the period following the construction of the Parthenon, including two lionesses pulling the god Taurus and a statue depicting "Triton and the three-bodied monster".

On the second floor, a multimedia center broadcasts documentaries. The large terrace overlooking the Acropolis, which houses a pleasant, shaded café-restaurant, is also accessible without a ticket and without queuing.

On the third floor, the tour ends with a grand finale in the Parthenon Hall, designed to recreate the dimensions and orientation of the Parthenon. It features the famous frieze, or at least what remains of it in Greece. Originally, this masterly sculptural composition included 378 figures, both human and divine, and over 200 animals (mainly horses). In "reconstituting" the Parthenon frieze puzzle, the Acropolis Museum elegantly reminds us that only a third of the remains found are on display here. Indeed, the remaining two-thirds, soberly stamped "BM", are a reminder that the bulk is still held by the British Museum in London. With the construction of this sumptuous museum, the Greeks hope one day to recover their friezes.

The"Museum beneath the Museum" or the"Museum of Excavations"

In June 2024, the Acropolis Museum is enriched by new collections and takes on new dimensions thanks to the opening to the public of the rooms formed by the excavation sites located at the level of the foundations, almost, of the main museum. It's a major museum space, aptly named the "Museum beneath the Museum" or the "Museum of Excavations".

The new, open-air spaces and display cases for objects and statues discovered during the excavations carried out during the construction of the Acropolis Museum are brand-new, captivating in their simplicity and clarity, allowing visitors to travel back in time in an unconventional way through the various historical stages from 4000 BC to the ^12th century AD.

The "Museum beneath the Museum" encourages visitors to reconstruct the daily life of one of Athens' oldest quarters through the quality of the excavations and the eloquent reconstruction of the remains. The main idea was that these new spaces should enable visitors to realize that this district to be discovered was a living organism, and that it had survived the centuries according to the social, economic and cultural structures of its time.

As you wander through the site, using suspended or cable-stayed corridors and a glass floor, you'll mingle with the citizens of Athens of yesteryear, foreigners, free men and slaves, men, women and children who left their traces here and objects of great historical value, some of which can be admired through the 35-metre-long showcases.

A total of 1,150 objects have been extracted from the successive layers of daily life in all its dimensions and from the site's occupation over time, helping to interpret what a visit to the old quarter might have left unanswered.

The visit to the "Excavation Museum" ends when you arrive in front of the glassed-in area displaying the statuses and reliefs of gods and philosophers. Among the gods is the unique statute of Osiris, associated with Dionysus Master of Time (Chronocrator) taming with his legs the eternal time - which governs human life - represented by a crocodile, dating from the 2nd century AD.

All the objects and statues on display are impressively illuminated, and the accompanying notices are sufficiently explicit. That said, these collections and their detailed descriptions will be digitized before the end of 2025 and made accessible via visual recognition applications, as is already the case for all the other collections of the Acropolis Museum.

Entrance to the Excavation Museum can be made with the same ticket that gives access to the main museum. For visiting times, which vary according to the season, please consult the website.