Greece Day 2, Athens - Kerameikos

To view the first post in this series click here.
To view the previous related post click here.

27 Oct 2007

Woke up early in the morning at around 6:30am. Today would be a busy day. I was going to walk to the Ancient Burial Grounds, Kerameikos (somehow the name sounds familiar). Followed by the National Archeological Museum and then to the Temple of Olympian Zeus as shown in the map below.

View Larger Map

The routes taken this morning were:

• Blue line -- walking route to Kerameikos
• Red line -- walking route to National Archeological Museum
• Yellow line -- Trolley route to back of Temple of Olympian Zeus

I began my long walk to Kerameikos by heading towards the up-class shopping street of Ermou. Since it was about 7:30am in the morning the place was rather deserted. It would start to get busy later in the day.

Ermou in the morning


Graffiti is everywhere as usual


A church in the middle of the shopping district!



The entrance


Interesting brand


Another church on the way to Kerameikos

Alas I arrived at the Ancient burial ground of Kerameikos where many rich Athenians were entombed. Tombs were decorated with elaborate marble sculpture and at certain points in history were so lavish that kings had to decree a ban on marble tombs due to over-consumption of resources. This was also the place monuments were erected to commemorate brave warriors.

A write-up of Kerameikos


Partial view from outside




There was a church next to it. Note the loud-hailers. Reminds me of minarets


Monument (right) and Sacrophagus (left)


Close-up of monument


The Sacred Way -- a road of Ancient Religious importance


Endamos River flows through this ancient site


Guess what's this? Why it is the ancient road to Plato's Academy! (Duh!)


Ancient walls at this site





Grave monuments at the Way of Tombs

Getting bored outside with the solemn scenery and morning, I proceeded to enter the on-site museum.

More grave monuments!


I think this is called a Koros.


A sphinx on top of a column. Nope they are not unique to Egypt but maybe the idea came from there.


A lion


A bull grave monument. Just look at the bull!


Riders


A boy


Pottery that people were buried with



Some interesting items, note the erm... birds?


A coloured sphinx



Somehow I think these are toys



Jiao Puei (Bird cups)


A depiction of Satyrs with wine



Hmmm...



Wrestling and riders. This style of pottery is called the black paint style.



Pottery in the red paint style. This was more advanced than the black paint style and allowed the depiction of more details.


Gold mini-masks

Thus ends all there was to see in Kerameikos. Sadly it was not very impressive and I was soon to realize why at my next destination -- the National Archeological Museum, touted as one of the best museums in the world.

View the next related post here.

Return to the trip index here.