Thanks for my get-well card @Former-Member .... ❣
I didn't write an explanation this time ....
I went for a wander into the city a couple of days ago. My train station was closed for a maintenance project, so I walked back from the next one, which meant walking past the base of the Acropolis. I didn't go in ... I have been there a few times before, but I am thinking of you guys and things I would like to show you as I am touring around ... 😊 ... and thought you might like to see this much of it.
I will post some more photos of the ruins that are all part of the old city around the base of the Acropolis that I passed walking back down from there. The city is set amongst many hills, the Acropolis being atop one of the central ones. The main building is called the Parthenon.
Here's something from Wikipedia-
The Parthenon itself replaced an older temple of Athena, which historians call the Pre-Parthenon or Older Parthenon, that was destroyed in the Persian invasion of 480 BC. The temple is archaeoastronomically aligned to the Hyades. While a sacred building dedicated to the city's patron goddess, the Parthenon was actually used primarily as a treasury. For a time, it served as the treasury of the Delian League, which later became the Athenian Empire. In the final decade of the sixth century AD, the Parthenon was converted into a Christian church dedicated to the Virgin Mary.
After the Ottoman conquest, it was turned into a mosque in the early 1460s. On 26 September 1687, an Ottoman ammunition dump inside the building was ignited by Venetian bombardment. The resulting explosion severely damaged the Parthenon and its sculptures. From 1800 to 1803, Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin removed some of the surviving sculptures with the alleged permission of the Ottoman Empire. These sculptures, now known as the Elgin Marbles or the Parthenon Marbles, were sold in 1816 to the British Museum in London, where they are now displayed. Since 1983 (on the initiative of Culture Minister Melina Mercouri), the Greek government has been committed to the return of the sculptures to Greece.
