Ancient Agora

South-east side

The Nymphaeum

Between the Agii Apostoli (Church of the Holy Apostles) and the South-east Temple, part of the fountain of the Nymphaeum is still visible. It was a large, semicircular and elaborate fountain facing north towards the Panathenaic Way.

Construction began under Hadrian and was completed around 140 AD under Antonius Pius. It was built over the remains of the Mint which had previously occupied this site. Later it was replaced by the Byzantine church of the Holy Apostles.

The walls of the fountain had niches decorated with statues of the Antonine imperial family and its lower part was formed by basins, pools and springs fed by the city’s Hadrianic aqueduct.

The Mint

The remains of a large, almost square, area (29 m by 27 m – 95.14 ft by 88.58 ft), identified as the Mint of Athens and dated to ca. 400 BC, can be found between the South-east Fountain House and the Panathenaic Way.

Today, only the northern half of the building, used mainly as an open courtyard, is still visible. It’s southern part was covered, ca. 150 AD, by the Nymphaeum and much later, ca 1000 AD, by the Byzantine Agii Apostoli (Holy Apostles) church.

The main manufacturing area consisted of a big room at the south-western corner where the metallurgical furnaces and water basins were. Two small rooms on the south-eastern corner served as storage areas or as offices for the supervisors or the Mint’s administrators. Not only coins were made at the Mint but other metal objects as well.

The south-east Temple

In the 1st century BC, a small prostyle temple was built on top of the ruins of the Mint. Eight columns from the classical Temple of Athena at Sounio were reused in the construction of its façade.

Inside the cella, piles of stones (mass of masonry) were found that formed the base of a statue as well as fragments of a statue of a female of the Caryatid type but double-sized. This temple is conventionally called “South-east” by the excavators because its suggested dedication to Athena cannot be verified.

The Eleusinion

You can see the remains of the Eleusinion “en astei” (in the city), equivalent to the Sanctuary of Demeter and Kore (Persephone) in Eleusis, to the east of the Panathinaic Way. The area is marked by a rectangular precinct in the middle of which the foundations of a quite large temple (11 m by 17,70 m – 6.08 ft by 58.07 ft) with a rectangular cella are preserved.

The main entrance was at the south. A small room (the holy of holies) to the north served for the safekeeping of the sacred objects which were transported from the Eleusis Sanctuary to the Eleusinion of Athens during the celebrations of the Great Eleusinian Mysteries.

This temple, dated to 490 BC, replaced an older one, dated to the end of the 6the century BC. To the east of the temple, on the oblong base (15 m by 2 m – 49.21 ft by 6.56 ft) were the so-called “attic stalae”, stone or wooden slabs, generally taller than wide, erected for funerary or commemorative purposes. A list was inscribed on those stelae of the property of Alcibiades and others that was sold by auction after their involvement in the mutilation of the Herms and in ridiculing the Eleusinian Mysteries in 415 BC.

In the second half of the 4th century BC, the old entrance to the sanctuary was replaced by a monumental propylon. In about the middle of the 2nd century AD the sanctuary was expanded to the south where a small portico in Doric style was built of which only the foundations are preserved today. The sanctuary was completely ruined during the invasion of the Herulians in 267 AD.