Definition: An acropolis is the high point of a city where a shrine to a city's most important god might be placed. In Athens the acropolis was the site of the Parthenon to their patron goddess Athena. The acropolis was inhabited as early as Neolithic times. During the Mycenaean era, there were fortifications and a palace. Building of temple monuments on the acropolis began in the 6th century B.C. In 480, when the Persians ravaged Athens [see Battle of Thermopylae], it provided a clean slate for Periclean building projects on the acropolis.
Robin Osborne "Athens" The Oxford Companion to Archaeology. Brian M. Fagan, ed., Oxford University Press 1996. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press.
The acropolis, originally called Cecropia in honor of the Athenians' legendary ancestor Cecrops, rested on a rock plateau about 200 feet high and 1000 X 460 in area. The Erechtheum was on the north. The Temple of Athena Nike and the Propylaia (Propylaea) are also on the Acropolis. Ancient kings also lived there.
Source:Robin Osborne "Athens" The Oxford Companion to Archaeology. Brian M. Fagan, ed., Oxford University Press 1996. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press.
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The tyrant Pisistratus and his sons resided on the Acropolis and embellished the old temple of Athena, but then the Acropolis suffered under the hands of the Persians. Restoration of the Acropolis began under Cimon and Themistocles.The Acropolis' Parthenon later became a Christian church and some years after the Turks took control of Athens in 1456, it became a mosque. In 1656, a lightning strike to a powder keg destroyed structures on the Acropolis.
Source: "The Attica of Pausanias," by Mitchell Carroll. 1907.
