Metravel city quest
City Athens: free walking route “quest: the gods’ dispute over a city” along the sights. 10 points. Approximately 3 h. Quests and legends - straight from your
This city's name began with a scandal. The myth goes like this: when the first city rose on the rock above Attica's plain, two Olympians disputed the right to name it: Poseidon, ruler of the seas, and Athena, goddess of wisdom. They agreed on a fair test: each would give the city a gift, and the people would choose. Poseidon struck the rock with his trident and a spring burst from the stone. The people gasped, tasted it, and found it as salty as the sea. Then Athena struck the ground with her spear and an olive tree grew: food, oil, lamplight and wood. The city chose the olive. It became Athens, and offended Poseidon supposedly sent droughts upon Attica for a long time afterwards.
Two and a half thousand years later, you can test whether the Athenians were wrong. Today you will walk around that very rock, the Acropolis, like a juror reopening an ancient case: through the square where modern Greece was born, Plaka's lanes, the stonemasons' island quarter, a Roman market, an emperor's library and the heart of ancient democracy, to the rock where myth says a god himself was tried. Gather evidence along the way: traces of olive, sea and the people who turned this whole dispute into a city.
What to do: 1) Read the story and task at each stop. 2) Find the place on the map and walk to it. 3) Look around and answer the question.
This walking route is about three kilometres long, almost entirely on pedestrian streets. We start on Syntagma Square by the parliament building. Leave Syntagma metro station and you are there. Let's go!
The route points in order — what these places are and why they are interesting. Tasks and answers stay inside the quest.
The square where you stand is called Syntagma, ‘Constitution’. It earned that name in a single September night in 1843: Athens's garrison and a crowd gathered beneath the palace windows and refused to leave until King Otto promised the country a constitution.
From Syntagma, go down Filellinon Street and turn right into Plaka, Athens's oldest quarter, a maze beneath the Acropolis rock. Tripodon, the Street of Tripods, will lead you to a little square with a round marble structure resembling a garden pavilion.
From Lysicrates's monument, climb towards the rock, along Epimenidou and then Stratonos, and the city suddenly ends. In its place come whitewashed single-storey houses, blue shutters, tubs of bougainvillea and shoulder-width paths.
Go down from Anafiotika through Plaka's lanes, keeping the Acropolis behind your left shoulder. In a few minutes, an octagonal marble tower appears above the archaeological site's fence.
Follow the archaeological site's fence along Pelopida Street to its western edge. There, facing you, stand austere marble gates on massive columns.
From the gate, go a block north to Areos Street. A tall marble wall with a row of slender columns stretches on your left.
Another hundred steps north bring you to old Athens's noisiest square. Monastiraki means ‘little monastery’.
Leave Monastiraki Square southwest along pedestrian Adrianou Street, beside the Ancient Agora's fence. A very long marble building with a seemingly endless colonnade rises behind the fence to your left.
Adrianou Street brings you to the end of the agora's fence. Continue up the path towards the Acropolis, to the bare rocky summit left of its entrance.
An optional stop: the Acropolis's main entrance is a hundred metres up the path from the Areopagus. If you have time and a ticket, go up.
This route is part of Metravel city quests. Below are the other quests in this city and cities with quests nearby.