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Hello everyone! Today, I’m going to be talking about our family visit to the Acropolis. We recently went to Greece and as of the writing of this blog, we still are there. We only came here for a conference my dad had to go to, so on the side we went to see the Acropolis as well. Because you’re not gonna go to Athens, and not see the Acropolis.

There are two big standing sections of the acropolis as well as a smaller one on the side. The smaller section is the Temple of Athena Nike or the Sanctuary of Zeus Polieus. They’re the same thing. The Parthenon was originally a temple dedicated to Athena but it eventually broke down and it’s restoration began in about 1920. The Parthenon is the bigger one of the 3 structures.

Fun fact, did you know that Athens was originally named for Athena because she was the patron god of their city. She had a competition with Poseidon to decide who would be the patron god of the city and she won because for some reason the citizens chose olives over horses. That’s why they built the whole temple.

Anyway, the other big standing section of the acropolis is the entryway. It was built a bit later, but originally you could walk into the central courtyard of the main temple via the entryway. When we were visiting there, my dad also took some great shots of the city because you can see almost everything from the top of the Acropolis. The view from there is breathtaking, so we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to take some incredible shots.

Also, while we were there of group of soldiers came in a line and basically moved everyone away from the Greek flag on the hill. They then did a procession of taking down the flag and leaving with it. They had guns and everything too so it was a bit scary. The reason why they did this is because the king Constantine II of Greece died a while ago so they did it in honor of him. It’s a bit sad that the king died, and I think that the procession to honor him was a nice way to be sent off.

There were a lot of cats there too. Apparently Athens has thousands of cats. We hadn’t seen any until that one day, but that day we saw at least 20 cats. There’s also a bunch of magpies on the Acropolis. If you don’t know what magpies look like, well I don’t blame you. I didn’t know either until today, They look like small ravens with very long tails and a white underbelly.

There are also some people playing some music there. One of the people were playing the Godfather on accordion. I’m not quite sure what this song is about, and I’ve never heard it before. I only know about this because my dad told me about it.

We also did a quiz about greek mythology up there and I got every single question right. It was quite fun. My mom even recorded it so I’m going to put out a blog about that very soon.

There was a few signs posted here and there saying about the Acropolis so I just went ahead and read them. They were mainly about the restoration and about what each part served but I didn’t see any signs of the smaller segment.

There’s also a mystery about the Acropolis. Apparently there was a statue of Athena with Nike in her hand and her shield in the other. Its name was the Athena Parthenos and it disappeared during Roman times so many people think it was stolen by the Romans but we may never know. It originally stood in the Acropolis, but it’s missing so it could be at the bottom of the ocean for all we know. Or maybe it never even existed.

But anyway we don’t know what happened to the statue and is one of the biggest mysteries surrounding the Acropolis. The museum says they will say what happened to it but I don’t believe that. Unless they have concrete evidence, I won’t believe it.

The Ruins of the Acropolis were eventually moved to the Acropolis museum which houses basically everything from the Acropolis except for a few parts of the actual Acropolis that’s still standing. The museum then replaced them with exact copies to make the Acropolis a sight worth seeing, and to support the standing parts. Anyway, bye everyone and see you later!