The Tsisdarakis Mosque is an Ottoman Mosque built when the Turks ruled Greece. After the defeat of the Turks, the building has been put to many varied uses. Today, it houses a small museum.
The Tsisdarakis Mosque was built by the Ottoman governor of Athens, Mustafa Aga Tsisdarakis in 1759. An inscription within the mosque gives a history of the construction of the building. The limestone used to build the structure was taken from the columns of the temple of the Olympean Zeus. The minaret of the mosque was destroyed during the Greek revolution in 1821.
After Turkish rule came to an end in Athens, the army took over the building. It was used at first as a guardhouse in 1847. Later the army used it as a prison, a barrack and a warehouse. In 1915, the structure was restored by Anastassios Orlandos to house the Greek Museum of handicrafts. In 1923 the name was changed to the Greek museum of decorative arts and in 1959 became the Greek museum of folk art.
Today the Tsisdarakis Mosque building houses a collection of ceramics and pottery. In addition to antique objects, exhibits displayed include works by artists from the Centre for the study of Traditional Pottery.

This ruined building is a colonnaded structure on the Acropolis built in 132 AD by the Roman Emperor, Hadrian. His rule was a time of peace, prosperity and when arts and culture flourished. The library is an example of the cultural institutions established during his reign.
The ruin of the building that once was Hadrian’s library has the structure of a Roman forum. It had a single entrance through a Propylon or gateway with Corinthian columns. It had a high wall surrounding the entire exterior with protruding semicircular recesses. The central courtyard had an oblong pool. The courtyard was surrounded by over a hundred columns.
The library was on the eastern part of the structure. During Hadrian’s reign, it was a storehouse of valuable rolls of papyrus and other artwork. The building had many chambers used as reading rooms and some were lecture halls. The library was damaged during the invasion of Herules and was restored again by the Roman leader of Athens, Herculius. Later, three Byzantine churches were built within the ruins of the library. A Byzantine 5th century church, a 7th century church and a 12th century cathedral form part of the ruins within Hadrian’s Library today. The Hadrian’s Library is a unique example of Roman architecture in Athens.

One of the earliest examples of a clock tower, the Tower of the Winds is located in the Roman Agora in Athens. The design has inspired observatories around Europe and the U.K.
The Tower of the Winds was designed in 50 BC by the astronomer, Andronicus of Cyrrhus. The octagonal structure is 12 meters tall and has a diameter of 8 meters. It once had a bronze weather vane on top with a sculpture of the sea God, Triton. The points of the octagon have friezes depicting the eight wind Gods who control the wind at each compass point. The tower also had sundials and a complicated water clock called the Clepsydra.
After the Roman era, the tower served many purposes. During Christian times, it served as a bell tower for a church. When the Ottoman Turks ruled Greece, it became a meeting place for whirling dervishes who used the structure to perform their meditative dance. Turkish inscriptions on the walls show that the tower had sunk to half its height during Ottoman rule. The Archeological Society of Athens excavated the structure and restored it to its original height in the 19th century. The Tower of the Winds, designed to calculate time, is a well preserved structure that has survived the ravages of time.

The church of the Holy Apostles Solaki is located within the ancient Agora in Athens. It is one of the few Byzantine churches that remains intact from the 10th century.
The church of the Holy Apostles was built over a 2nd century Nymphaeum or monument dedicated to nymphs in classical Greece. The name Solaki may be from the family who sponsored one of its many renovations. The church is one of the finest surviving examples of Byzantine architecture. The design has a central pier with cross in square forms that is descriptive of the Athenian type of Byzantine architecture. The floor plan is in the form of a cross. There are apses on four sides and the entrance of the church is from the east. Four pillars support the dome. Originally, the church had a marble floor and altar.
Through the ages extensions and ornamentations were added to the church. The interiors of the building have impressive frescoes that were probably painted during the 17th century. Though the church was one of the oldest surviving structures of the Byzantine era, additions and extensions had altered its original appearance. Between 1954 and 1956, the American Archeological School in the Agora carried out extensive restorations and the building today, is almost identical to the structure that housed the church in the 10th century.

The Stoa of Attalos is recognised as one of the most impressive stoæ in the Athenian Agora. It was built by and named after King Attalos II of Pergamon who ruled between 159 BC and 138 BC. Typical of the Hellenistic age, the stoa was more elaborate and larger than the earlier buildings of ancient Athens. The stoa's dimensions are 115 by 20 metres wide and it is made of
Pentelic marble and limestone. The building skillfully makes use of different architectural orders. The Doric order was used for the exterior colonnade on the ground floor with Ionic for the interior colonnade. The Stoa of Attalos houses the Museum of the Ancient Agora. Its exhibits are mostly connected with the Athenian democracy. The collection of the museum includes clay, bronze and glass objects, sculptures, coins and inscriptions from the 7th to the 5th century BC, as well as pottery of the Byzantine period and the Turkish occupation.

The Temple of Hephaestus and Athena Ergane is the best preserved ancient Greek temple. It is a Doric order peripteral temple, located at the north-west side of the Agora of Athens, on top of the Agoraios Kolonos hill. From the 7th century until 1834, it served as the Greek Orthodox church of St. George Akamates. The dimensions of the temple are 13.708 m north to south and 31.776 m east to west, with six columns on the short east and west sides and thirteen columns along the longer north and south sides (with the four corner columns being counted twice). According to Pausanias, the temple housed the bronze statues of Athena and Hephaestos. An inscription records payments between 421 BCE and 415 BCE for two bronze statues but it does not mention the sculptor. In the 3rd century BCE trees and shrubs (pomegranates, myrtle and laurel) were planted around the temple, creating a small garden.

The Kerameikos is an ancient cemetery where many wealthy Athenians were buried in classical times. It is also the site where two important procession roads, the Panathenaic Way that led to the Acropolis and the Sacred Way that led to Eleusis from Athens, met.
The Keramiekos gets its name from the potter community in Athens. In classical times it may have been the potter’s quarter of the city. It had two gateways, one called the Dipylon that stood on the road that led to the Acropolis and the Sacred Gate that stood on the road that led to Eleusis. A ruined building with a courtyard called the Pompeion where costumes and other objects required for religious processions were stored is also located at the site. The cemetery lies along the sides of the gateways. It was used for burial of the dead, from the 9th century BC until the end of the Roman reign. The Street of Tombs within the Kerameikos is flanked by tombstones on the graves of wealthy Athenians.
The Kerameikos has a small museum displaying sculpture, pottery and tombstones discovered during excavations at the site. These include a beautiful marble bull that was found over the grave of Dionysus of Kolitos.

The Kerameikos Museum forms part of the Kerameikos archeological site. The Kerameikos is an ancient cemetery near the Roman Agora in Athens and the exhibits are artifacts and pottery from the tombs.
The Kerameikos Museum was built in 1937. The design of the museum was by architect, H. Johannes. The funds for the museum came from a trust established by American philanthropist, Gustav Oberlaender. As archeological excavations unearthed an increasing number of objects in the cemetery, it became necessary to expand the existing museum. In the 1960s, the structure was enlarged with the help of a generous donation by the Boeringer Brothers.
Objects at the museum relate to the customs followed by Athenians during funerals. There are urns, items offered at the grave, stone engravings, tombstones and funeral sculpture. There are Loutrophoroi pots with a long neck usually kept in the graves of unmarried women. Tombstone sculpture include sculptures of sphinxes, a relief stele of Euphoros from the grave of a young man with its colors intact and the monument of Dexileos. The monument consists of a relief of a young man astride a horse depicting Dexileos who died at the age of 20 fighting the Corinthians. One of the treasures is a marble bull found on the grave of Dionysus of Kolitos.
The tombstones in the cemetery today, are replicas. The original tombstones excavated at the site are displayed at the Kerameikos Museum.