Ancient Agora

South side

The East Building

The Middle Stoa and the South Stoa were adjacent at their eastern end to the East Building. It was built in the middle of the 2nd century and it was relatively small (12 m by 40 m – 39.37 ft by 131.23 ft) divided in length in two parts. The eastern section, which faced the Panathenaic Way, consisted of a single room with a mosaic floor where the sockets for securing wooden tables or benches for money-changers or bankers are preserved.

The west section faced the Agora and was at a level 1,7 m (5.5 ft) lower than the east section. It had five square rooms. A central staircase connected the two different levels.

In the first half of the 2nd century BC, the Middle Stoa, the South Stoa II and the East Building formed one big commercial center with an eastern entrance known as the “South Square”.

The Middle Stoa

The Middle Stoa was named after its location so as to distinguish it from the other Stoa in the Ancient Agora.  This was a very large stoa (147 m by 17,5 m – 482.28 ft by 57.41), built in ca. 180 BC. It may have had a commercial nature. The Middle Stoa divided the Athenian Agora in two uneven parts.

This stoa had Doric colonnades on all sides. A transverse, probably Ionic, colonnade divided the interior of the Stoa into two aisles. The columns were interconnected at their lower part by parapets.

The name of the financier of the Stoa is not known. It may have been Pharnakes I, the King of Pontus, but is also is possible it was donated by the Attalids family, the kings of Pergamon. Today, the foundations of the stoa can still be seen as well as parts of its krepis (steps) and many of the lower column drums.

Enneakrounos (Nine-spouted fountain house)

The ruins of a large fountain house dated to ca 530-520 BC are on the south-eastern corner of the Ancient Agora, behind the Sacred Stoa II. These ruins have been identified as the Enneakrounos, a famous fountain house .

According to written sources, it was built by either Peisistratos or his sons. Modern research, however, tends to place the Enneakrounos on the south-east of the Agora, close to the Ilissos river. Scholars today prefer the use of the name “South-east fountain house”.

Whatever the name, the fountain house was a large rectangular building (18,2 m by 6,8 m – 59.71 ft by 22.30 ft) with a wide-spaced central room flanked by two smaller rooms on its narrow sides.

The side rooms were supplied by water through spouts on the outer walls. The west room functioned as a basin from where water could be drained behind a low parapet, while in the east room one could fill up a hydria (water jar) directly from the waterspout. 

The South-west Temple

In the 1st century BC, a small temple was built to the east of the Tholos. With its entrance on the west side, archaeologists have named it simply as the South-west Temple. Six Doric columns, recycled from a building in Thorikos (possibly from the Temple of Demeter and Kore that used to be there), were incorporated in its façade.  The Doric architrave and the frieze were originally parts of other buildings.