The Greek Agora

The Greek Agora is an ancient market place. This term is misleading because you think of people just buying and selling things, when it was actually not only that but a gathering place for social interactions as well as political and spiritual business. Inside the Agora is the Temple of Hephaestus. It is arguably the best preserved temple in mainland Greece.

View of the temple from the other side of the Agora

The West side of the Temple

You'll notice that the frieze(the part of the building resting on top of the main beam resting across the tops of columns) is not adorned at all in this picture. This is the side that is facing away from the rest of the Agora, so may not have been finished due to time, finances, or just because no one looks at it. Yes, I learned new vocabulary today as I had no idea what a frieze was. I also learned a lot more, which I have since forgotten. Here are some pictures of the close up on some of the detail that adorns other sides of the temple.

depiction is called centaurs vs lapiths

We also got special permission to go inside, so here is view of that:

inscription inside the temple (hard to see)

I can't pass up a great view of the Parthenon on the Acropolis, and the temple at Agora had a great view, so I took advantage of getting a few more of those shots.

 While still in the Agora, we visited the Stoa of Attalos, which has been reconstructed. It is now a museum where they exhibit a collection of artifacts connected to Athenian Democracy. In the first picture you see the only part of the reconstruction that was done with actual remnants of the original building.

I enjoyed these lion head spouts on the top of the Stoa because of the story behind them. The point of the lions is to direct the flow of water. During reconstruction they realized too late that the original lions had tongues to direct the water, so these lions just drool instead of spouting out water as they should.

Close up of the drooling lions(not actually named drooling lions)

What I learned today:
Standing in an Agora for three hours makes you hot and your knees hurt.
I was smart to put on sunscreen.
Squatting down helps relieve the knee pain.
When  you wear your batman shirt, you will inevitably run into a 10 year old boy wearing the same shirt even if you are in Greece.
I don't know architecture terms.
There is so much history in just a few square miles.
A lot of people wear fanny packs here, and when I say a lot, I mean about 40% of the male population.
I have decided to do a blog on fanny packs at some point in time.