Stoa of Attalos

In front of you, at the edge of the Agora, stretches a colonnade that looks as if it was built yesterday… and in a way it was. The original stoa was a gift from Attalos II, king of Pergamon, who had studied in Athens as a young man. It went up in the mid-2nd century BC and served as a shopping arcade: two storeys of shops opening onto a colonnade where Athenians strolled, struck deals and sheltered from the sun.

1The heart of the city

The Agora spreading out below was much more than a market. It held the council buildings, the archives, the law courts and the statues of the heroes. Socrates debated there with anyone willing to listen, and there Athenians voted in ostracisms, scratching the name of the politician they wanted to banish onto shards of pottery.

2Rebuilt stone by stone

The stoa was destroyed by the Heruli in AD 267 and its remains were built into a defensive wall. Between 1953 and 1956, the American School of Classical Studies rebuilt it with marble from Mount Pentelicus, the same ancient quarry, following the surviving original pieces. Today it houses the Agora Museum, with objects from daily life and from the workings of democracy, such as ostraka and a machine for selecting jurors by lot.

3What to look for

• The columns: Doric on the outside of the ground floor, Ionic on the upper storey.
• The difference in colour between the ancient blocks and the new ones on the façade.
• The Temple of Hephaestus, across the Agora, almost intact.