We started the day at the new Acropolis Museum. It's wonderful, and it's kind of neat to see them at work excavating the area under the museum through the floor. The Acropolis is stunning and beautiful, but I've never seen it without all sorts of cranes and scaffolding that clutter up the views. Someday... There are some steps now to help people get up on the Aeropagus. This used to be something of a treacherous adventure.
Our guide on this trip did a great job walking us through the museum and Acropolis, but she also gave us an excellent overview as she took us through the agora and the museum in the Stoa of Attalos. (The museum in the Stoa of Attalos was also a new experience for me, and a very worthwhile one.)
From the agora we headed over to the Plaka area to eat and we also had some time to take the Metro and catch Syntagma Plaza and Onamia Square. The Metro is quite nice and very reasonable for getting around Athens.
From a New Testament perspective, it is important to remember that Athens was probably a rather insignificant city in the first century. Given Athens' history and Paul's famous speech in Acts 17 and its role as the most prominent city in Greece today, we probably think of it in the same way when Paul went through. Yes, it had its history and reputation as a center of learning even in Paul's day, but it just wasn't that important. Philippi, Thessalonica, and Corinth were all more significant cities. It is not coincidental that in the history of Paul and the early church, those three cities are far more prominent in the literature of the NT.
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