First trip to the Agora

This morning we walked down (quite literally down, the School is rather close to Mt. Lykavettos so there's a slope toward the center of the city) to the Agora.

Our professor took us over to the Hephaestion which is the best preserved Greek temple in the world.  We learned about the debate and evidence for the temple being the Hephaestion mentioned by Pausanias or the Thesion it was once (and maybe even now?) believed to be.

The best part was that as Members of the School we got to go inside where tourists are not allowed to tred.  Well, better than that was getting to lean on a column.  An ancient one.  That ancient Greek builders carved.  A long time ago.

It's preserved so well because it became a church pretty early (at least by the 7th century).  The vaulted ceiling is just one of the changes the Christians made to the temple.  Apparently they also filled it with burials and cut away parts of columns to make space for sarcophagi. Fortunately they left the pedimental sculpture alone.

We also checked out the temple to Ares which is only slightly less well-preserved. (Haha).

Lastly, we looked at a wall constructed by the cannibalization of other buildings in the Agora for the defense of Athens.

I thought this bit looked like a train.

We also had our first Greek lesson which went really well!  I'm so excited to speak to people in a foreign language.  Modern Greek has some very interesting differences from ancient Greek that will make pronunciation confusing for a while, I think.

Finally, a bit of nerdiness from my walk to the Agora this morning:

 
For those of you who don't read Greek, the street sign facing the camera says "Herodotou," which means it's the Herodotus St. Herodotus, one of my favorite ancient Greek authors, was the father of history.