Acropolis Museum

Cour­tesy The Acrop­o­lis Museum

After cross­ing the ground floor lobby towards the turn styles of the Museum, the first col­lec­tion lies before the vis­i­tor.
An ascend­ing, wide glass-floored gallery presents finds from the slopes of the Acrop­o­lis. On the left hand side, finds from some of the key sanc­tu­ar­ies of the slopes are exhib­ited. On the right hand side, finds from the smaller sanc­tu­ar­ies and the set­tle­ments that devel­oped on the slopes of the Hill are dis­played. Unique vases from the Sanc­tu­ary of Nymphe, the relief of Telema­chos, the­atri­cal masks and the trea­sure of Aphrodite amongst many other exhibits, pro­vide a fas­ci­nat­ing intro­duc­tion to the larger sanc­tu­ar­ies and the cer­e­monies asso­ci­ated with them in antiquity.

The vis­i­tor is drawn up towards the mon­u­men­tal glass stair­case at the end of the glass floored ramp by the large archi­tec­tural sculp­tures of the ped­i­ment of the Hekatompe­don, the first large tem­ple of the God­dess Athena on the Acropolis.

The vis­i­tor begins the tour of the first floor gal­leries at the north­east cor­ner, where archae­o­log­i­cal finds and a scale model make clear the sig­nif­i­cance of the Acrop­o­lis in the Mycanaean Period both as a res­i­den­tial area and as the seat of the local ruler. The shift in the sta­tus of the Acrop­o­lis to an impor­tant reli­gious cen­ter is sig­naled by the finds from the Geo­met­ric period and in par­tic­u­lar by the bronze dec­o­ra­tive disc α tour of the acrop­o­lis museum from a tem­ple roof. This devel­op­ment is con­sol­i­dated in the mind of the vis­i­tor, with the view­ing of the Hekatompe­don ped­i­ment sculp­tures at close range, where a scene of a lion entwined in bat­tle with a bull is pre­sented.
The vis­i­tor then moves to the south side of the Gallery where the rich­ness and range of archi­tec­tural sculp­tures, prin­ci­pally free stand­ing votives stand. Depic­tions of young women (the Korai), the horse rid­ers (the Ippeis) and many oth­ers pro­vide a strik­ing pic­ture of the Acrop­o­lis in the Archaic Period.

Acrop­o­lis Museum Image 1

In the same Gallery, close to the exhi­bi­tion of the Korai, the vis­i­tor is pre­sented with the com­mand­ing sculp­tures of the ped­i­ment of the Ancient Tem­ple of Athena Polias.
For the first time vis­i­tors to the Archaic Gallery are afforded the oppor­tu­nity to view exhibits from all sides as three-dimensional exhibits. With the ben­e­fit of the chang­ing nat­ural light, vis­i­tors can dis­cern and dis­cover the del­i­cate sur­face vari­a­tions of the sculp­tures and select the antage point from which to observe the exhibits.
The vis­i­tor pro­gresses to the close of the Archaic col­lec­tion, with the dis­play and nar­ra­tive about the Per­sian dis­as­ter on the Acrop­o­lis, and is pre­pared for the next col­lec­tion – that of the so-called Severe Style. Turn­ing back to look at the Gallery the vis­i­tor is likely to be impressed with the beau­ti­ful view of the sculp­tures amongst the tall columns of the Archaic Gallery.

Vis­i­tors can then take the stairs, esca­la­tor or ele­va­tor to reach the sec­ond floor where the Museum restau­rant oper­ates but where they can also have panoramic views of the Archaic Gallery and the Gallery of the Slopes below from the pub­lic view­ing balconies.

Another level up using the stair­case, esca­la­tor or ele­va­tor and the vis­i­tor finds them­selves in the atrium of the Parthenon Gallery.
Here the vis­i­tor can observe a video pre­sen­ta­tion about the Parthenon, before or after their visit to the Parthenon Gallery, and access other infor­ma­tion about the sculp­tural dec­o­ra­tion of the monument.

Acrop­o­lis Museum Image 2

The ancient mar­ble inscrip­tions record­ing details of the con­struc­tion of the statue of Athena Parthenos pro­vide infor­ma­tion on how demo­c­ra­tic bod­ies in the 5th cen­tury BC func­tioned.
The instal­la­tion of the frieze of the Parthenon on the rec­tan­gu­lar cement core that has exactly the same dimen­sions as the cella of the Parthenon enables a com­pre­hen­sive view­ing of the details of the frieze as one takes the peri­met­ric walk of the Gallery. The nar­ra­tive of the story of the Pana­thenaic Pro­ces­sion is pieced together with a com­bi­na­tion of the orig­i­nal blocks of the frieze and cast copies of the pieces in Lon­don. The metopes of the Parthenon are mounted in their cor­rect order between the peri­met­ric columns of the Gallery and the ped­i­ment sculp­tures, east and west, are dis­played in their respec­tive places.

The descent of the vis­i­tor back to the first floor to the last gallery of the Museum, affords views of unique works that became pro­to­types for sub­se­quent peri­ods from antiq­uity to today. For the first time ever, it is pos­si­ble to view to see the cof­fered ceil­ing of the Propy­laia and the sculp­tures from the para­pet of the Tem­ple of Athena Nike, and finally the Cary­atids – or Kores of the Erec­theion at close prox­im­ity on the bal­cony over­look­ing the Slopes Gallery.
The exhi­bi­tion con­cludes in this first floor gallery. Reliefs of Athen­ian decrees, impres­sive por­traits, Roman copies of clas­si­cal mas­ter­pieces and depic­tions of philoso­phers and his­tor­i­cal fig­ures are the exhibits cov­er­ing a period from 5th cen­tury BC to 5th cen­tury AD. The vis­i­tor then descends the mon­u­men­tal stair­case, cross­ing the Gallery of the Slopes once again towards the Museum exit.

In the com­ing months vis­i­tors will be able to com­mence their tour of the Museum from the on-site archae­o­log­i­cal exca­va­tion that lies within the Museum. When con­ser­va­tion of the remains within the exca­va­tion is com­pleted and metal ramps above the exca­va­tion installed, vis­i­tors will be able to walk among – or rather above the remains of the ancient neigh­bor­hood. Assisted by key infor­ma­tion points at selected van­tage spots, vis­i­tors will be able to gain an under­stand­ing of life in the ancient neighborhood.

Acrop­o­lis Museum Image 3

The exca­va­tion pro­vides the oppor­tu­nity to vis­i­tors to appre­ci­ate both the mas­ter­pieces of the Acrop­o­lis in the upper lev­els of the Museum against the remains of the day to day lives of the peo­ple that lived in the shadow of the Acrop­o­lis over var­i­ous periods.

Museum vis­i­tors have access to a range of vis­i­tor ser­vices includ­ing the ground floor cafe and sec­ond floor restaurant–cafe with its panoramic views of the Acrop­o­lis. A tem­po­rary exhi­bi­tion gallery, audi­to­rium, a vir­tual real­ity the­ater and two Museum shops assure a high stan­dard of vis­i­tor expe­ri­ence in the Museum.

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Tags: Acropolis Athens, Acropolis Greece, Acropolis Museum, Yorgo Nestoridis

This entry was posted on June 21, 2009 at 11:59 pm and is filed under Acropolis Museum, Culture, Yorgo Nestoridis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.