{"id":5551,"date":"2017-01-06T17:41:39","date_gmt":"2017-01-06T17:41:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/isobaresoffit.com\/?p=5551"},"modified":"2017-01-06T17:41:39","modified_gmt":"2017-01-06T17:41:39","slug":"the-acropolis-in-athens-greece","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/isobaresoffit.com\/2017\/01\/06\/the-acropolis-in-athens-greece\/","title":{"rendered":"The Acropolis in Athens, Greece"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are a lot of reasons why everyone should hope to visit the Acropolis in Athens if you ever get the opportunity. It is absolutely amazing on so many levels, whether visually, historically, or culturally, it is an important landmark for many reasons. For those of us\u00a0 who treasure democracy, the fact that the foundations of democracy were envisioned over two-thousand years ago is an astounding\u00a0reality when you\u00a0consider how long it took to actually implement. Whether you believe in the possibility of a world governed by multiple gods or not, understanding\u00a0how the ancient Grecians viewed the connection\u00a0between natural events and the supernatural world is still fascinating. Unlike\u00a0most modern\u00a0religions, the Greek gods and goddesses were endowed with human traits and weaknesses, something that seems hard to imagine in a world where higher powers are deemed as infallible.<\/p>\n

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The Parthenon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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View of Athens from the Acropolis<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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The Erechthion<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Regardless of their belief system or the reason\u00a0for building these temples that have lasted centuries, there is no doubting that they are well worth visiting if you ever get the chance. If we can offer any advice for visiting the Acropolis, it would be\u00a0to go as early in the day as possible. We arrived at about\u00a0ten in the morning, an hour after it\u00a0opened, and we had to wait behind\u00a0five other groups buying their tickets to\u00a0enter. While we were inside of the site, we had few\u00a0crowds and were able to see each of the temples and monuments unobstructed from throngs of people taking selfies of themselves. By the time we exited the Acropolis\u00a0a couple of hours later, the line to purchase tickets was several\u00a0hundreds of people\u00a0long, most likely with a wait\u00a0that was well over an hour long. Add to that the fact that\u00a0all of those same\u00a0people would be competing for the same\u00a0views, taking the same pictures, reading the same placards, you can only\u00a0imagine how the experience might be changed.<\/p>\n

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Another View of the Erechthion<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Theatre of Dionysus<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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We Were Glad to Miss the Lines<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The second piece of advice that we would offer would be to buy the package ticket\u00a0bundle that\u00a0provides access to the other historical sites that are located in Athens. It might only save you\u00a0about ten Euros, but you\u00a0won’t have to wait to purchase tickets as you visit each of the other sites, therefore avoiding more lines. We can only imagine how much history is buried beneath the buildings of Athens if only we were able to unearth it, but for now we will just have to gaze in amazement at the sights that have been unearthed for us to see. Even without those other sites, the Acropolis provides an amazing view back into history.<\/p>\n

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Close-Up of the Top of the Parthenon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Enjoying Everything that We Saw<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Backside of the Erechthion<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There are\u00a0five major sites that make up the Acropolis. The most famous is the Parthenon, the Erechthion, the Temple of Athena Nike, the Theatre of Dionysus, and the Propylaia. Before you enter the main site, you pass by the Theatre of Dionysus, which is truly quite striking and could seat up to 17,000 people to watch theatrical events of the time. Surely it must have been quite the social event to spend an evening being regaled with the adventures of the gods or heroes such as Hercules.<\/p>\n

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The Parthenon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Another View of the Theatre of Dionysus<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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The Erechthion from the Distance<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As you enter, you pass through the Propylaia, which is the grand entrance to the entire site and will definitely fill you with a sense of awe for everything that you are about to see. On the right of the entrance, you will find the Temple of the Athena Nike, which is not particularly striking, but is still amazing for its cultural and mythical history. Obviously it is not necessary to understand the mythological beliefs of the ancient Grecians to appreciate the grandeur of the monuments that they built, but it is worth knowing if you want to understand why they expended such energy to create monuments meant to appease their gods and bring favor upon the land and the people.<\/p>\n

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The Propylaia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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We Were Very Happy<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Temple of Athena Nike<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We didn’t take a tour on our trip, but there are certainly plenty of opportunities to get a guide if you so desire. There is so much to see and learn about this important historical and archeological landmark that we will likely read and investigate more and more about it over the coming\u00a0months and years, just to truly appreciate everything that we have seen. Hopefully you will get a chance to visit and see it for yourself, but in the meantime we hope that you get a sense for how impressive this incredible location truly is from the few images that we were able to capture.<\/p>\n

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Another Temple<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are a lot of reasons why everyone should hope to visit the Acropolis in Athens if you ever get the opportunity. It is absolutely amazing on so many levels, whether visually, historically, or culturally, it is an important landmark for many reasons. For those of us\u00a0 who treasure democracy, the fact that the foundations … <\/p>\n

Continue reading The Acropolis in Athens, Greece<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":89944846,"featured_media":5570,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"wprm-recipe-roundup-name":"","wprm-recipe-roundup-description":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2756],"tags":[458205,30367,279783,207630,1098,594157745,678,164069,436,41012,200],"class_list":["post-5551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-greece","tag-acropolis","tag-archeology","tag-athena","tag-athens","tag-culture","tag-greece","tag-history","tag-parthenon","tag-photography","tag-temple","tag-travel"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/isobaresoffit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/imgp1122.jpg?fit=3008%2C2000&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6pbM5-1rx","jetpack-related-posts":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/isobaresoffit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5551"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/isobaresoffit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/isobaresoffit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/isobaresoffit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/89944846"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/isobaresoffit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5551"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/isobaresoffit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5551\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5616,"href":"https:\/\/isobaresoffit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5551\/revisions\/5616"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/isobaresoffit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/isobaresoffit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/isobaresoffit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/isobaresoffit.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}