Acropolis of Athens

A Mycenaean megaron palace stood on the rock in the late Bronze Age; almost nothing survives of it except a single limestone column base and a few sandstone steps. Soon after, a Cyclopean circuit wall of large stone blocks, some 760 metres long and up to ten metres high, was raised around the summit; from the end of the thirteenth century BC it remained the acropolis's main defence until the fifth. An earthquake before the thirteenth century BC opened a fissure near the rock's north-eastern edge, and Mycenaean builders cut an elaborate stairway down to a well at its base, giving the stronghold a protected water source under siege.

After the Athenian victory at Marathon in 490 BC, the Athenians revised their limestone temple to Athena, the Older Parthenon, to a marble design; work stalled in 485 BC as Xerxes prepared for war. The building was still unfinished when the Persians stormed and burned the Acropolis in 480 BC, destroying it along with the old temple of Athena Polias and almost everything else on the rock. Column drums, triglyphs and other burned fragments were built into the Acropolis's new north wall as a war memorial, and remain visible there.

Reconstruction of the walls began after the Athenian victory at Eurymedon in 468 BC, ordered by Cimon and Themistocles; most of the temples standing today were rebuilt under Pericles in the following decades, overseen by Phidias, with Ictinus and Callicrates as architects. The Parthenon rose between 447 and 438 BC, dedicated to Athena at the following year's Panathenaea, though work continued until 432 BC. Mnesicles began the Propylaea gateway in 437 BC; its colonnades were nearly finished by 432 BC, but the Peloponnesian War halted work in 431 BC and Pericles's death in 429 BC left it permanently unfinished. The Ionic Temple of Athena Nike followed between 421 and 409 BC, and the Erechtheion, built around several older shrines on uneven ground, between 421 and 406 BC.

Under Byzantine rule the Parthenon was reconsecrated as a church dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Under the Latin Duchy of Athens it became the city's cathedral and administrative centre, with the Propylaea absorbed into a ducal palace and a great tower, the Frankopyrgos, added beside it. After the Ottoman conquest, the Propylaea served as the garrison headquarters of the Turkish army, the Parthenon was converted into a mosque, and the Erechtheion became the governor's private harem. In 1687, during the Morean War, the Venetian commander Morosini besieged the Acropolis; the Ottomans were storing gunpowder inside the Parthenon, and a Venetian bombardment struck the magazine, severely damaging the temple in the explosion.

Shortly before the 1821 Revolution, the Scottish Lord Elgin had large sections of the Parthenon's frieze, its metopes and pediments, a caryatid and a column from the Erechtheion dismantled and shipped to England, bribing Ottoman officials for permission and giving Athens a clock in return, later set up in the ancient agora. Once the uprising began, the Acropolis was besieged three times in succession by Greeks and Turks and suffered fresh destruction — twice by Greek forces in 1821–1822 and once by the Ottomans in 1826–1827. Between 1822 and 1825 the Greeks built a new bulwark, named for Odysseas Androutsos, to protect the recently rediscovered Klepsydra spring, which became the fortress's sole fresh water supply.

After independence, the Byzantine, Frankish and Ottoman additions were cleared away to return the site to its ancient form: the Parthenon's mosque was demolished in 1843 and the Frankish tower in 1875, under a restoration attributed to the German architect Leo von Klenze. At the start of the Axis occupation in 1941, German soldiers raised the Nazi war flag over the Acropolis; Manolis Glezos and Apostolos Santas tore it down in one of the first acts of Greek resistance, and in 1944 Prime Minister Georgios Papandreou climbed the rock to mark liberation from Nazi rule.

The Acropolis was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1987. A restoration programme begun in 1975 has used titanium dowels and reassembled original fragments to reverse damage from pollution, past misguided repairs and military use, adding new Pentelic marble only sparingly; restoration of the Temple of Athena Nike was completed in 2010. In 2021, new reinforced-concrete paths added to improve accessibility drew criticism from archaeologists.