On our first day in Athens, we decided to ease in and do a free walking tour. I didn’t really know these were a thing until we found the one in Bucharest and now I will never not check to see if a city has one of these to offer. They are fantastic! Our guide was Andrew from Australia who has been a tour guide all around Europe, but in Greece for the last 8 years. Here is what he showed us…
Hadrian’s Arch – The Greeks love Hadrian. When under the power of the Roman Empire, earlier emperors had basically just let Greece fall to crap, but when Hadrian came along, he really helped to fix things up, making Athens the new cultural center of the empire.
This statue of Alexander the Great was built simply to complain about the name of the country of Macedonia because that is not historically where Macedonia was. As a result (not of the statue, but of years of contention), Macedonia finally became known as North Macedonia.
This statue of Lord Byron, a British politician who negotiated some contract with Greece to give the country guns. The statue depicts him reaching up to the Virgin Mary but you can see on the other side of him there is a young boy. This is to depict that Lord Byron was a pedophile who died of gonorrhea. This tiling they found when beginning construction for a new metro prior to the 2004 Olympics. They believe it may be the remains of a Roman bath that dates back to 60 ADThis statue represents an ancient runner. They used to run naked.We also stopped at the Olympic stadium that was used in the first Olympic games held in 1896. It is no longer used for much except for the torch ceremony every two years prior to the Olympics and the end of the Greek marathon every November.We saw the changing of the guard. This was a very interesting display of a lot of leg kicking. These kids only get paid 8 Euro a month to do this, but they do it for the prestige.Athena is on the left and Apollo on the rightSocratesPlatoOur final stop was at the replica of the Temple of Hera, which is used as the National Academy
One Comment
Julie Thompson
The sky is so blue and those pictures are incredible. I love getting. a history teacher explaining things to me.