June 15th - Day 5

The Parthenon

This morning kicked off day one of our visit to the Athenian Acropolis. The Acropolis is located on a high hill in what was once the center of Athens. On the Acropolis are several important building, including probably the most famous - The Parthenon. The Parthenon was built as a temple for the patron goddess of Athens, Athena.

Visiting the Parthenon was been a dream of mine since I first learned about it in World History I in 9th grade, and it did not disappoint! The Parthenon is currently undergoing restoration, which is why there was scaffolding and cranes everywhere, but despite those obstacles the sight of the Parthenon was still amazing.

Standing inside the Parthenon

Just when I thought it couldn't get any better than looking up at the Parthenon, it did! We actually got to go inside the Parthenon! It has been closed to the public due to the restorations, but ASCSA made arrangements for us to meet with one of the supervisors of the Parthenon's restoration and she took us inside and walked us through the process of restoring the building and some its more interesting architectural features. It truly is an amazing architecture structure, both in ancient times and today. Definitely a dream come true!!

Black Figure Pottery

Afterward the Parthenon, we headed across town to the National Archaeological Museum where we met Sonia Klinger, who is an expert in Greek pottery. She took us through the pottery collection housed at the museum and showed us how Greek pottery evolved over time. It was really interesting and we got to see pottery recovered from digs. I saw Black Figure and Red Figure and learned about a 3rd type that I was not so familiar with referred to as white-ground.

The rest of the afternoon was free. I walked down to one of the local markets and got some amazing fresh fruit, then headed back to Loring Hall to do some laundry. Later I'm going to head over to the air conditioned library :) to start working on my site presentations, which are coming up in a few weeks. Hopefully I'll get to some more site posts after dinner, but I can't make any guarantees!