Acropolis Museum

The Acropolis Museum stands at the foot of the sacred rock in the Makrygianni district, about three hundred metres from the Parthenon itself. Designed by Bernard Tschumi with the Greek architect Michael Photiadis, it opened in June 2009 to house everything found on the Acropolis and its slopes, from the earliest votive offerings to the sculpture of the great Classical temples. Glass, concrete and natural light are the whole point: the building is planned so that the marbles are seen in the same Attic sunshine that once fell on them, and so that the Parthenon is visible through the walls while you look at its sculptures.

The visit is a climb through time. A glass ramp on the ground floor, the Gallery of the Slopes, carries you over the ancient neighbourhood excavated beneath the building. The first floor is the Archaic Gallery, a forest of korai, kouroi, riders and painted pediments from the temples destroyed by the Persians in 480 BC, with the Caryatids of the Erechtheion on a balcony at the far end. The top floor is turned at an angle to align with the Parthenon and holds the frieze, metopes and pediment figures in the exact arrangement they had on the temple, with plaster casts filling the gaps left by the pieces held in London and elsewhere.

Allow two to three hours. The museum is calmer in the late afternoon, and the top floor at sunset, with the temple glowing on the rock outside, is one of the great museum experiences anywhere.