60 Fun Facts About Athens

In the founding myth, Athena won patronage of the city by giving Athenians what?

Poseidon offered a salt spring (or, in Virgil, a horse); the city's legendary founder-king judged the contest.

How do modern scholars think Athens and Athena got their matching names?

The ending -ene is common in place names but rare in personal names; the root is probably pre-Greek.

Ancient Athenians were nicknamed Tettigophoroi, meaning wearers of what?

The insect symbolised being earth-born, like the legendary founder Erechtheus, and being musical.

Who introduced democracy to Athens in 508 BC?

Solon's reforms had paved the way a century earlier; Cleisthenes reorganised citizens into ten tribes by residence rather than wealth.

Which Athenian general led the victory over the Persians at Marathon in 490 BC?

Themistocles won the crucial sea battle at Salamis ten years later; the Persians still sacked Athens twice.

Which statesman guided the building programme that produced the Parthenon?

The tensions his empire caused led to the Peloponnesian War of 431-404 BC, which Athens lost to Sparta.

What was ostracism in Athenian democracy?

Citizens scratched names on potsherds; it let the Assembly restrain powerful men without harsher punishment.

Construction of the Parthenon began in which year?

It was finished in 438 BC with decoration continuing to 432 BC, at the height of the Delian League's power.

The Acropolis rock rises how far above sea level?

Its flat top covers about 3 hectares and held a Mycenaean fortress before the temples.

What is the monumental gateway at the western end of the Acropolis called?

Mnesicles began it in 437 BC in Pentelic stone; the tiny Temple of Athena Nike stands beside it.

The Erechtheion's Porch of the Maidens is held up by how many sculpted female figures?

One Caryatid was removed by Elgin's agents and is in the British Museum; the others are in the Acropolis Museum with replicas on the building.

The Parthenon was badly damaged in 1687 when a Venetian bomb hit what inside it?

The Ottomans had turned the temple-turned-mosque into a powder magazine during Morosini's siege.

Roughly what share of the surviving Parthenon sculptures did Elgin's agents remove between 1801 and 1812?

A parliamentary inquiry in 1816 ruled the acquisition legal; Greece still campaigns for their return from the British Museum.

Which Roman emperor finished Athens' Temple of Olympian Zeus some 638 years after it began?

It had 104 colossal columns and was the largest temple in Greece; 16 columns still stand.

Which emperor's 529 ban on pagan philosophy teaching is usually taken as the end of ancient Athens?

Athens had remained a centre of Neoplatonism, teaching Julian the Apostate among others.

Which sultan captured Athens in 1458 and forbade the looting of its monuments on pain of death?

Under Ottoman rule the city shrank to what one historian called a small country town.

Athens replaced which city as capital of independent Greece in 1834?

The choice was sentimental: war had reduced Athens to about 4,000 people huddled below the Acropolis.

Greece's first king, who commissioned a modern city plan for Athens, came from which country?

King Otto hired Kleanthis and Schaubert; the neoclassical 'Athens Trilogy' of university, library and academy followed.

The Panathenaic Stadium is the only stadium in the world built entirely of what?

Herodes Atticus rebuilt it by 144 AD; Greeks call it the Kallimarmaro.

The first modern Olympic Games opened in Athens on which date?

American James Connolly won the triple jump that day, becoming the first Olympic champion in 1,500 years.

Which Greek won the marathon at the 1896 Olympics, to the delight of the home crowd?

The Panathenaic Stadium overflowed with what was then the largest crowd ever to watch a sporting event.

The marathon race takes its name from the legend of which Greek messenger?

He supposedly ran from the battlefield of Marathon to Athens in 490 BC; the story's historical accuracy is disputed.

Athens hosted the Summer Olympics for the second time in which year?

It had lost the centenary Games to Atlanta; the 2004 Games cost the Greek government nearly 9 billion euros.

Which architect added steel arches and a glass roof to the Athens Olympic Stadium for 2004?

The stadium had already hosted Champions League finals in 1994 and 2007.

What did the 1922 refugees from Asia Minor bring to Athens that later became the basis of Greek popular music?

They settled in poor districts after the population exchange with Turkey and swelled the city's numbers.

What are the kilted Greek presidential guards outside Parliament at Syntagma called?

The kilt is the fustanella; the 1837 uniform was modelled on the dress of the War of Independence fighters.

Which hill is the highest point in central Athens at 277 m?

Myth says Athena dropped it there while carrying a mountain to build the Acropolis; a cable car runs to St George's chapel on top.

Which is the tallest of the four mountains ringing the Athens basin, at 1,413 m?

It is a national park; a 2007 fire burned much of its forest, which helps clean the city's air.

Plaka, below the Acropolis, is described as what?

It has been inhabited since the Neolithic; Anafiotika within it was built like a Cycladic village by settlers from Anafi.

Piraeus, Athens's harbour town, ranks how in Europe for passenger traffic?

It is also the thirteenth-largest container port in the world after heavy investment by China's COSCO.

Line 1 of the Athens Metro first opened in which year?

It began as a steam railway between Piraeus and Thiseio; Lines 2 and 3 opened in January 2000 and display artefacts dug up during construction.

Athens International Airport, opened in 2001, is named after which statesman?

It was built in 51 months near Spata for 2.2 billion euros and won European Airport of the Year in 2004.

The Acropolis Museum, opened in 2009, was designed by which architect?

Glass floors reveal the excavations beneath, and a top gallery aligned with the Parthenon awaits the marbles still in London.

Which Athens institution holds the world's largest collection of ancient Greek antiquities?

Its artefacts span more than 5,000 years from the late Neolithic to Roman Greece.

Athens claims to have more of what than any other city in the world?

148 of them, including the ancient Odeon of Herodes Atticus, home of the Athens Festival from May to October.

Elefsina, west of Athens, held Europe's official temperature record until 2021 with what reading?

Set on 10 July 1977; Athens has been called the hottest city in mainland Europe and was the first in Europe to appoint a chief heat officer.

Which two clubs, from Athens and Piraeus, are the 'eternal enemies' of Greek football?

Olympiacos is the only Greek club to win a European trophy, the 2023-24 Conference League; Panathinaikos reached the 1971 European Cup final.

How many EuroLeague titles had Panathinaikos's basketball team won by the end of 2024?

Olympiacos had three; AEK was the first Greek team to win any European team trophy.

What was the name of the Athenian founder-king who judged the contest between Athena and Poseidon?

Cecrops was said to be half man, half serpent; Theseus later unified Attica.

The National Garden of Athens, completed in 1840, lies between Parliament and which building?

The 15.5-hectare garden was Queen Amalia's project; the Zappeion hosted fencing at the 1896 Games.

What was Athens's population when it became capital in 1834?

War had halved it; today the municipality has 643,452 people and the urban area over 3.6 million.

Athens is described as the southernmost capital on which landmass?

Valletta and Nicosia are further south but on islands.

Besides the Acropolis, which other Athens site is a UNESCO World Heritage Site?

The 11th-century monastery is famous for its Byzantine mosaics.

In 2018 UNESCO named Athens what?

Athens had been European Capital of Culture back in 1985, the very first holder of that title.

How many countries competed at the 2004 Athens Olympics?

10,625 athletes contested 301 events; the flame was lit at Ancient Olympia on 25 March 2004.

The pedestrian archaeological walk through Athens ends just past which sanctuary in Thiseio?

The walk starts at the Temple of Olympian Zeus and passes under the Acropolis by Plaka to Thiseio.

Athens is described as the only major European city to be what?

Hills and mountains rise around and through the city; the Sierra Club's Athens chapter runs 4,000 outings a year.

What colour is Line 1 of the Athens Metro, the oldest line, running from Piraeus to Kifissia?

Its 24 stations cover 25.6 km, with transfers to the Blue Line at Monastiraki.

Athens lost its bid to host the 1996 Summer Olympics to which city?

The city was awarded the 2004 Games instead, at a vote in Lausanne on 5 September 1997.

What was Kerameikos, one of the three points of the first modern city plan of Athens, in ancient times?

The plan formed a triangle with the Acropolis and the new palace of the Bavarian king, now the Greek Parliament.

Which American-born soprano settled in Athens in 1937 and debuted with the Greek National Opera?

In 2018 the city's municipal Olympia Theatre was renamed in her honour.

The Athens Festival, running from May to October, is staged in which ancient venue?

Athens counts 148 theatrical stages, more than any other city in the world.

In which year did the Fourth Crusade conquer Athens, beginning two and a half centuries of Latin rule?

The city did not return to Greek government until the 19th century, passing from the Latins to the Ottomans in 1458.

Athens became the first European city to appoint what kind of official in response to rising temperatures?

A strong urban heat island effect has earned Athens the label of the hottest city in mainland Europe.

The 'Athens Trilogy' on Panepistimiou Street comprises the Academy, the National Library and what?

All three neoclassical buildings went up in the mid-19th century.

Along with the Cephissus and the Ilisos, which stream is counted among the historical rivers of Athens?

Athens's meteorology is considered among the world's most complex because its mountains cause a temperature inversion.

How many municipalities make up the Athens metropolitan area?

They are organised into seven regional units and together housed 3,744,059 people in 2021.

Which mountain bounds the Athens Basin to the west?

Parnitha lies to the north, Penteli to the northeast and Hymettus to the east.

The Proastiakos suburban railway links Athens airport to which town 106 km to the west?

The route runs via Larissa station, the city's central rail hub, and the port of Piraeus.

AEK, the third of Greater Athens's big multi-sport clubs, originated in which suburban town?

Panathinaikos began in Athens itself and Olympiacos in the port city of Piraeus.