An Athens city pass is a single pass that a visitor uses for sights in the Greek capital. It belongs with the city-sights Greece tours that start in Athens.
What is an Athens city pass?
An Athens city pass is one pass that a visitor uses for more than one sight. It works in the Greek capital as a single item to carry. It is a general idea, not one fixed product, so a traveller checks what a chosen pass covers.
Athens is a large urban area. The metropolitan area had 3,638,281 residents in 2021, spread over 2,928.717 square kilometres. The Municipality of Athens is only a small unit of local government inside the whole urban area. A visitor with an Athens city pass moves around a wide region, not one small centre.
The earliest human presence in Athens began somewhere between the 11th and 7th millennia BC. A millennium is a span of one thousand years. Greek mythology says the city was named after Athena, the goddess of wisdom. Classical Athens was a centre for Ancient Greek democracy, the arts, education and philosophy.
Athens keeps Roman and Byzantine monuments, plus a smaller number of Ottoman ones. Byzantine means from the eastern Roman empire, and Ottoman means from a later empire. A traveller with an Athens city pass meets these layers of history one stop at a time. The traveller picks the order of those stops.
- World Heritage: UNESCO recognises two World Heritage Sites in Athens: the Acropolis, or high city, and the medieval Daphni Monastery.
- Port: Piraeus, the port of Athens, is the second-busiest passenger port in Europe.
- Learning: Athens joined the UNESCO Global Network of Learning Cities in 2016.
Today Athens is a cosmopolitan metropolis, meaning a large international city. It sits at the centre of economic, political and cultural life in Greece. Each traveller decides which sights fit the trip. An Athens city pass is one way to organise that plan.
What does the Acropolis add to an Athens city pass?
An Athens city pass is one pass that a visitor uses for a set of sights. The Acropolis adds a rocky hill topped with ancient buildings. People in ancient times also called it Cecropia, after the legendary king Cecrops.
The Acropolis has deep roots. In the late Bronze Age, a Mycenaean palace with a megaron stood on the hill. A megaron is a large main hall. The Mycenaean wall had two parapets, which are low protective walls. They were made of large stone blocks cemented with earth mortar, a paste that holds stones together.
Builders shaped the hill in other ways. A wall of nine gates, called the Enneapylon, once surrounded it. An old temple was nicknamed the Bluebeard temple, because its three-bodied figure had dark blue beards. Builders also levelled the south summit with 8,000 two-ton blocks of limestone. An Athens city pass visit meets this layered past.
Stone moved around the hill in odd ways. Limestone meant for the Olympieion temple went into the Older Parthenon instead. Anyone planning with an Athens city pass can also picture the Propylaea gate, which had two wings. The northern wing carried paintings by Polygnotus, an artist of ancient times.
- East entrance: The Erechtheion has an east entrance lined with six Ionic columns, a style with scrolled tops.
- West part: The western part of the Erechtheion held the altars of Hephaestus and Voutos.
- Lance tip: The gilt tip of the Athena Promachos lance reflected light to ships rounding Cape Sounion.
The Acropolis therefore gives an Athens city pass a deep story to tell. Each wall, gate and temple on the hill shows how people built, changed and rebuilt one rock. That makes the hill a clear anchor for any list of Athens sights.
What does the Ancient Agora add to an Athens city pass?
An Athens city pass is one pass that a visitor uses for more than one sight. The Ancient Agora, a public marketplace, fits that plan. A stoa is a covered walkway with columns. The Stoa of Attalos had two storeys, while earlier Athenian stoas normally had one.
The Stoa of Attalos measures 115 by 20 metres, so it is a long and wide building. A row of 42 closed rooms at the back of the ground floor served as shops. A visitor with an Athens city pass can read the layout as an old shopping street today.
Attalos presented the stoa to Athens to thank the city for his education under the philosopher Carneades. In AD 267 a group named the Heruli burned the stoa’s woodwork. The museum inside displays exhibits linked to Athenian democracy, rule by citizens’ votes. Such displays suit a plan built around an Athens city pass.
The Stoa Poikile, the Painted Stoa, dates to the 5th century BC and served purely for socialising. The Monument of the Eponymous Heroes honoured ten tribal heroes, who gave the tribes their names. It also doubled as a notice board for new laws. Both show the Agora as a public space.
- Church use: From the 7th century until 1834, the Temple of Hephaestus served as a Greek Orthodox church.
- Old name: Visitors long mislabelled the Temple of Hephaestus as the Theseion, the shrine of Theseus.
- Carvings: Only 18 of the temple’s 68 metopes, the square panels meant for sculpture, carry any sculpture.
An Athens city pass works best as a way to link sights in one city. Reading about the stoas, the monument and the temple first helps a visitor plan the day. The Ancient Agora shows how much history one site holds.
What does the Temple of Olympian Zeus add to an Athens city pass?
An Athens city pass works as one pass for more than one sight. The colossal, or huge, Temple of Olympian Zeus in Athens has a long story. Hippias and Hipparchos began that temple around 520 BC, after their father Peisistratus died.
The work did not run smoothly. The tyranny, meaning the rule of one strong leader, fell in 510 BC. Hippias was expelled from Athens. Work on the temple stopped. Only the platform, which is the flat base, and parts of the columns were finished. The temple stayed that way for 336 years.
Later builders switched to expensive, high-quality Pentelic marble, a hard stone, for the huge temple. Its Corinthian order was the first of its kind used on the outside of a major temple. An order is a column style, here with a decorated top. Both choices are worth noting on an Athens city pass visit.
In 124-125 AD Hadrian came to Athens and then began a massive building programme that included this temple. He also took the title Panhellenios to mark the dedication of the temple. An Athens city pass route can make room for the full story of Hadrian’s work in the city.
- Length: The finished temple measured 110.35 metres from one end to the other.
- Width: The building was 43.68 metres wide, measured from one side to the other.
- Columns: Each column stood 17.25 metres high and was 1.70 metres wide at its base.
Sulla took unfinished columns from the temple to Rome, where they were reused in the Temple of Jupiter. So a part of the Athens story also reached another city and another temple. A visitor with an Athens city pass can follow that story there.
What does the Roman Agora add to an Athens city pass?
An Athens city pass is one pass that a visitor uses for different sights. The Roman Agora is an ancient market square, a place of trade. Julius Caesar made the promise in 51 BC that led to its building.
A visitor with an Athens city pass plan can begin at the west side of the market. There stands the Gate of Athena Archegetis, a Doric entrance; Doric is a plain, sturdy style of column. An inscription on it records a decree from Hadrian about the tax duties of oil merchants.
On the east side, an Ionic gate called the East Propylon stood beside the Tower of the Winds. A propylon is a gateway, and Ionic is a different column style from Doric. A bronze Triton statue topped the tower. It held a rod that worked as a weather vane, which turns with the wind.
Inside the tower, a water clock measured time. Water that came down from the Acropolis, the high rocky hill above Athens, drove it. A sundial is a clock that reads a shadow. Each sundial on the tower was customised for the time its face caught direct sunlight. The tower suits an Athens city pass day.
- Fountain: A fountain stood on the south side of the Roman Agora.
- Office: An inscription proves the market had an Agoranomion, an office for market officials.
- Spouts: The cornice above the frieze, a carved band, has lions’ heads carved to stand out as water spouts.
The Roman Agora is easy to place within an Athens city pass plan. One pass serves more than one sight. A visitor walks through the market and reads the stones and inscriptions. Then the visitor moves on to the next stop on the pass.
What does the Panathenaic Stadium add to an Athens city pass?
An Athens city pass is one pass that a visitor uses across the city’s sights. The rebuilt Panathenaic Stadium copied the size and design of its second-century original. A stadium is an arena with seat tiers around a track, and this one has a U-shaped track.
Architect Ernst Ziller led a thorough excavation of the stadium site in 1869-70. An excavation is a careful dig that uncovers what lies buried. Architect Anastasios Metaxas drew the rebuilding plan in the mid-1890s, using the findings of Ziller. An Athens city pass plan can include a stop at the result of that work.
The Zappas Olympics took place in the Panathenaic Stadium in both 1870 and 1875. They were an early try at reviving the ancient Games, the sports contests held in ancient times. The 1896 opening day then fell on Easter Monday. It also fell on the anniversary of Greek independence.
An estimated 60,000 spectators filled the stadium for the 1896 opening day, with King George among them. Harvard Stadium in Boston, built in 1903, took the Panathenaic Stadium as its model. A day built on an Athens city pass can meet a design that a Boston stadium copied.
- Events: The 1896 stadium also hosted athletics, gymnastics, weightlifting and wrestling events.
- Setting: Katherine Welch described the stadium as marble steps cut in tiers into a U-shaped narrow valley.
- Owls: Carved owls on the cavea seats, the seating bowl, stand for the goddess Athena.
The stadium sits between the twin pine-covered hills of Ardettos and Agra. Anyone who plans around an Athens city pass can set aside time to look at that setting. It joins the old history of the city to the sights around it.
What questions come up about an Athens city pass?
An Athens city pass trip rests on four things: airport, season, metro and hills. Each answer below gives plain facts about one of them, so travellers can plan the days with care. The facts cover the capital’s gateway, its weather, its rail lines and its high ground.
Which airport serves an Athens city pass?
Travellers fly into Athens International Airport. It replaced the old Ellinikon International Airport. In 2013 it handled about 12.5 million passengers. Its 153 check-in desks, where travellers drop bags and collect boarding passes for their flights, sit in the main terminal.
Which season suits an Athens city pass?
Average high means the warmest daily reading, averaged over a month. At the Elliniko weather station on the Athens coast, the April average high is 19.6 °C. At the Elliniko station, the July average high is 32.2 °C. At the Elliniko station, October brings an average rainfall of 45.9 mm.
Which metro lines serve an Athens city pass?
A metro is an electric city railway. Metro Line 1, the Green line, is 25.7 kilometres long with 24 stations. Metro Line 2, the Red line, is 18.7 kilometres long with 20 stations. Line 1 has an underground section between Monastiraki and Attiki stations.
Which hills rise above an Athens city pass?
Lycabettus is a Cretaceous limestone hill in the Greek capital. Cretaceous names an old age of Earth’s past, and limestone is a kind of rock. Myth credits Athena with creating Lycabettus from a limestone mountain she dropped, carried from the Pallene peninsula. The Philopappos Monument measures 9.80 by 9.30 metres.