Ancient Agora

West side

Temple of Hephaistos

The temple, known as the Hephaisteion or Theseion, is Doric and peripheral with a pronaos and opisthodomos. It crowns the hill of Kolonos Agoraios and is the most prominent and better preserved monument of the Agora.

The temple was dedicated to two gods, Hephaistos and Athena, whose bronze cult statues stood in the interior. It has also been proposed that the temple was dedicated to Eukleia (Artemis). The temple was richly decorated. The construction of the Hephaisteion started in 449 BC. Planting pits dating from the 3rd century BC show that the temple grounds were fully landscaped. In the 7th century AD it was converted to a Christian church.

The plan has a distinctive arrangement, the east porch being aligned with the third columns on the flanks. As in the Parthenon, over the porch the Doric frieze is replaced by a continuous Ionic frieze. The architrave, more suitably, has a continuous molding at the top, rather than regulae and guttae. The building is almost wholly of Pentelic marble, except the lowest of the three steps, which is limestone. This is the only temple left in Greece that still has a roof.

The temple is a peripheral hexastyle with 13 columns on its long sides and measuring about 31,8 m by 13,8 m (104,3 ft by 45.27 ft). The temples pronaos  (the inner area of the portico) and opisthodome (a back room often used as a treasury) had a second row of columns.

It’s similarity to the Temples of Poseidon at Sounio, Ares in the Ancient Agora and Nemesis at Rhamnous, have let the archaeologists to the conclusion that the four temples were designed by the same architect. The Temple of Hephaistos is the best preserved temple in all of Greece.

Archaeologists originally believed the temple was dedicated to the Athenian hero Theseus who founded the city of Athens by resettlement and whose heroic deeds are narrated in relief on the northern and southern sides of the building. This is where the name Theseion came from, a name given also to the surrounding are in modern day Athens (Thissio).

Systematic excavation in the Ancient Agora however, and its relation to written sources proved that it was in fact a temple dedicated to Hephaestus and Athena. The two gods protected craftsmen (coppersmiths, potters etc.) whose workshops were discovered at a short distance from the temple.

In the 5th century AD the temple was transformed into a church dedicated to Saint George. It remained in use until 1835. Thus the building escaped damage. During the first hundred years of the Greek State, it was occasionally used as a museum.

The temple is made almost entirely of Pentelic marble. At the end of the cella, around the interior of which ran a Π shaped colonnade, was a podium with relief decoration on which stood the bronze statues of the two gods, made by Alcamenes probably between 421 and 415 BC. To the west of the temple a ditch was discovered in which shards of the clay moulds used in construction were found.

On the temple’s façade are ten metopes depicting the Labors of Herakles, while on each of the northern and southern sides there are four metopes depicting the heroic death of Theseus. On the pronaos gate is a frieze in relief, depicting the fight between Theseus and the sons of his uncle, Pallas. The opisthodome also bears a frieze with the Centauromachy (battle with the Centaurs). The existence of a freeze on a Doric temple has been attributed to the influence of the Parthenon. If this archaeological assumption is true, the temple must have been completed at a date later than the Parthenon.

The Monument of the Eponymous Heroes

The site of the Monument of the Eponymous Heroes, built in ca. 330 BC, was on the west side of the Ancient Agora, east of the Metroon. Today you can still see the monument’s oblong pedestal (16,4 m by 1,87 m – 53.80 ft by 6.13 ft) on which the bronze statues of the ten eponymous heroes of the Athenian tribes once stood. Additionally, two bronze tripods were placed at either end of the pedestal.

According to Pausanias, the mythical heroes were Hippothoon, Antiochos, Aias, Leos, Erechteus, Aigeus, Oineus, Akamas, Cecrops and Pandion. The Monument of the Eponymous Heroes was enclosed by a wooden fence supported by stone posts while its facade served as a notice board for important public announcements.

During the Hellenistic and Roman Periods the Monument of the Eponymous Heroes underwent changes related to the introduction of new tribes in honor of foreign rulers who were generous to Athens. Thus, in 307/6 BC, two new statues were added to the pedestal: one of Demetrius the Besieger and the other of his father Antigonos. This resulted in an extension of the monument to the south.

In 223 BC a third statue was added, this time in honor of King Ptolemy Euergetes of Egypt. In 200 BC the statues of Demetrius the Besieger and his father were taken down and replaced by that of King Attalos I of Pergamon. In the 2nd century AD the statue of the Emperor Hadrian, as an eponymous hero, was placed on the monument.

The Old Bouleuterion and the Metroon

To the left of the Kolonos Agoraios hill there is a complex of ruins of various structures from different periods. One of these ruins was the Old Bouleuterion, an Archaic temple possibly dedicated to Rhea, the mother of the gods, and the Hellenistic Metroon.

The Old Bouleuterion was constructed at the beginning of the 5th century BC to serve the Council of Five Hundred, the principal administrative body of Athens. This council, the Boule, was formed by 50 members selected at random from each tribe. They prepared business for the assembly to discuss. Speaking in the Bouleuterion was timed by measuring the flow of water from a clay pot. One was actually found at the site.

The Council could not make policy decisions; that role was left to the assembly, composed of all adult male citizens. Each tribes’ representatives on the Council served as the Prytane (minister) for 1/10 of the year.

The hall had tiers on the sides for 650 people to meet. There were two gates on one side and an altar in the middle of the chamber for offerings to the gods. The roof was covered by wood. The dimensions are 20 m by 21 m (65,6 ft by 68,9 ft) nearly square in shape. There was an additional third tier of seats for guests.

When, in the 5th century, the New Bouleuterion was built, the Old Bouleuterion did not cease to be used. It was transformed into the Repository of State Archives where official public documents were stored. It was also the cult place of Rhea. In Addition, it housed the cult statue of the goddess, a work of either Pheidias or Agorakritos.

During the second half of the 2nd century BC the sanctuary was replaced by the new building complex of the Metroon, possibly at the expense of Attalos II.  The Metroon, meaning “mother’s building” (38, 83 m by 29, 56 m – 127,39 ft by 96.98 ft) consisted  of four rooms that faced eastwards. In front of them was a colonnade of 14 Ionic columns. The northern chamber was the largest. it had an open peristyle court and an altar set up in the centre.

In the photo reconstruction you can see the Temple of Hephaistos (1) in the background with the Metroon (2) just in front of the New Bouleuterion (3) and next to the Tholos (4).

The New Bouleuterion

The New Bouleuterion (council house) was a large rectangular structure (16 m by 22 m – 52.49 ft by 72.17 ft) to the south of the Ancient Agora. It consisted of a wide auditorium with its entrance as its south-east corner and wooden seats placed in amphitheatre style inside.

Around the beginning of the 3rd century BC, a porch of Ionic columns was added along the southern side of the building and a monumental Ionic propylon (entrance) was built in. Their foundations can still be seen today.