The Academy or Acadimeia was a suburb of ancient Athens on the outer Kerameikos, near the shore of Kifissos river south of Hippias Kolonos. Took its name after the first settler Acadimos. The Academy was a sacred grove that walled by the son of Pisistratus, Hipparchus, the 6th century BC, who speculated that founded the famous Gymnasium. To the Academy led the so-called “outside road” which had been established to be the Torch race in honor of the dead and starts from Dipylon, Kerameikos. The width has identified that reached 38m. It is believed that the road was reaching to today’s square at the junction of the roads Platonos, Kratylou and Vasilikon, were crossed the precinct of the Academy. Near Academy’s Gymnasium, Plato founded in 387 BC his philosophical school that took its name from the place of Academy, known as Plato’s Academy.
Excavations began in 1929 on the initiative, custody and expense of P. Aristofrona and by John Stavropoulos from 1955 to 1963 at the expense of Archaeological Society. The most important monuments of Plato’s Academy are:
- The sacred House
- Gymnasium (1st BC – 1st century AC)
- The archway house considered as the prehistoric house of Acadimos
- The Peristyle building (4th century BC), a large square building with the internal peristyle. Others consider it as arena and others as a branch of the Gymnasium.
Today, Plato’s Academy is a very deprived area with serious problems in infrastructure, accessibility, management/determination use of land etc. For this area, in any case an intervention of the State required. Is one of the 6 areas for recast.
You can go there by bus, No 051, from Omonoia metro station.
The cache is a small plastic container with few tradable items and a pencil. Please try to log your visit in only one cell the date, your name and your country. Put it back exactly as you found it.