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We visited on a Tuesday morning mid October during covid restrictions. Only one of the 3 entrances were open - the most northern one, not far from the Monastiraki metro station. It's free with the 30 euro pass and well worth the visit. It's a large site with lots of ruins, some in varying states of disrepair. The Stoa of Attalos is the main attraction. You can easily spend 2 hours looking around. There are plenty of places to eat nearby. We found a lovely taverna off the beaten track - Taverne Platanos. …
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Date of experience: October 2020
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This is one of the best preserved archaeological sites in Athens. It is quite large which makes it feel peaceful. Definitely worth getting the 30 euro combined archaeological ticket and taking this one in.
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Date of experience: October 2020
1 Helpful vote
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We were in Athens at the start of the Covid restrictions in March 2020 and all the major attractions were closed due to this, including the Ancient Agora. Still, you could get a view of it through the trees when walking down from the Areopagus hill. It looked lovely and is an amazingly complete looking structure which would've been great to see close up. Oh well, the view from the hill was good anyway. It was a lovely vista with it being nestled in lovely green parkland with what looked like scattered ruins located all around it.…
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Date of experience: March 2020
2 Helpful votes
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Sarah b wrote a review Oct. 2020
Lytham St Anne's, United Kingdom1,345 contributions366 helpful votes
The Ancient Agora is huge and we needed a good few hours to get around everything. There was a good museum there with some of the art and statues taken from the site. Well preserved with some conservation work still ongoing, we were glad of our guidebook to supplement the information boards as we went round. Interesting that the government was by an administrative assembly (boule), which was made up of 50 people from each of the 10 tribes of Athens, 500 governors in total that served for a period of 35 days each before swapping, so by the end of the year, all tribes had been represented.(10 month year at this stage). There was the remains of one if the most important buildings that hosted debates and was also where goods were measured, a kind of weights and measures department (tholos). Lots of temples and historical buildings or remains of them. I was interested to learn about the history of Athens, before the Romans invaded in 86 BC. They developed a strong economy and were doing ok for centuries, then the Persians invaded and knocked them flat, robbing them of their wealth and treasures. They picked themselves up and became even stronger over the next 300 years, but then the Romans invaded in 86 BC, and were in power until around 500 AD, so they haven't had it easy really. A lot of the Ancient sites we saw are from the Roman era, but not all, and it was good to see the whole story. In the Ancient Agora there is the middle stoa which would have been a place for business and commerce and also for people to meet one another. It was said that Socrates would have frequented here. Apparently also Socrates was held in the prison here and it was here that he died after taking hemlock. Very sad, and I didn't know of the circumstances of his death. As suspected, turns out he was accused by the authorities of anti democratic teaching but really it was questioning the authority of the deities, for which he was found guilty and was executed by being made to drink hemlock. I'm not sure if that makes me feel better about it or not, knowing that he didn't choose to go that way. Spent nearly 3 hours here. …
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Date of experience: October 2020
3 Helpful votes
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The place is huge and you would spend hours looking. Inside there is a very beautiful reconstructed museum and a temple that are very worthwhile, the rest are more ruins and you can't see what was there
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Date of experience: September 2020
2 Helpful votes
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