On Dionysiou Areopagitou Street, a short walk from the Acropolis, the Acropolis Museum offers a close reading of the monuments and communities that occupied the sacred hill. Its purpose is more focused than that of a general antiquities museum: it brings together finds from the Acropolis and its slopes, presenting them in a sequence that spans the prehistoric era through the late antique period. The collection is not simply a store of celebrated sculpture. Pottery, votive objects, architectural fragments and everyday items help visitors see the hill as a place used, altered and reinterpreted over many centuries.
The present museum opened to the public on 20 June 2009, but the effort to protect and display finds from the Acropolis began much earlier. Greece’s first museum on the hill was founded in the nineteenth century; subsequent discoveries repeatedly outgrew the available space. The official museum history records the decision to build a new institution away from the summit, with an architectural competition held in 2000. Bernard Tschumi’s design, developed with Greek architect Michael Photiadis, placed a contemporary building near the monuments while making archaeological remains beneath it part of the visitor experience.
