The Roman Agora and the Tower of the Winds

What it is

The Tower of the Winds was built in the 2nd or early 1st century BC by Andronicus of Cyrrhus, a Syrian astronomer. It is an octagonal marble tower about twelve metres high, and each face carries a relief of one of the eight wind gods with the weather he brings. Boreas from the north with his conch, Zephyros from the west scattering flowers.

Below each relief the sunlit marble is scored with the lines of a sundial, so the tower told the hour twice over from outside. Inside there was a water clock, which mattered in a city where public business ran by daylight. It stands at the edge of the Roman Agora, which costs €10 with a €5 reduced ticket, and it is the best-preserved building on the site.

Give the reliefs ten minutes of daylight, since the north faces sit in shadow for much of the day.

It was a clock

Inside it there was a water clock, fed from the springs on the Acropolis slope, and on the roof a bronze weathervane in the shape of a Triton. Sundials outside for sunny hours, water clock inside for the rest: it is the most complete ancient timekeeping building that survives anywhere, and it survives because, like the Temple of Hephaestus, it spent centuries in religious use — as a Christian baptistery and later as a Sufi lodge under Ottoman rule.

What else is in the square

The Gate of Athena Archegetis on the west side, four Doric columns of Pentelic marble with a pediment, financed by Julius Caesar and Augustus; the marble paving Hadrian laid, some of it inscribed with texts by Marcus Aurelius on the tax duties of oil merchants because the slabs had been used for something else first; and the foundations of the colonnades, shops and warehouses that made this a commercial square rather than a civic one.

Half of it is still under the neighbourhood

The Roman Agora disappeared so completely under later Athens that until the nineteenth century only the gate stood above ground, and most observers took it for a temple. Houses and lanes had grown over the square over the centuries, so digging it out meant demolishing homes and closing a street in Plaka, which was slow and contentious work. Even after all that, what you can walk through today is roughly half the original enclosure.

The other half remains under the buildings of Plaka, so the site reads as an excavation cut into a living quarter rather than a cleared ruin. This shapes a visit in a practical way. The visible ground is compact, and a careful circuit of the paved part, the tower and the gate takes well under an hour, so pair it with nearby sites rather than budgeting a morning for it alone.

The hours

The Roman Agora opens daily at 08:00. From 1 April to 31 August it closes at 20:00, then the closing time steps down through autumn until it reaches 15:00 from 1 November to 31 March. Last admission is twenty minutes before closing.

In winter that means the site is shut by mid-afternoon while the Acropolis stays open another two hours, so plan the tower for the morning or early afternoon between November and March. Admission is €10 full and €5 reduced, which is half the price of the Ancient Agora, and it is one of the smaller state sites so a short visit is normal. Note the standard closure dates for Greek state sites: 1 January, 1 May, Orthodox Easter Sunday, 25 March and 25 and 26 December.

On hot afternoons during official heatwaves the ministry has closed open-air sites through the hottest hours, sometimes announced only a day ahead.

Getting there

The entrance is on Dioskouron Street, about two minutes on foot from Monastiraki station, which is served by Line 1 and Line 3 of the metro. Buses 025 and 026 stop at Monastiraki as well. By car it is roughly nine minutes from Syntagma, but there is nowhere to leave a car near the site, so driving gets you no further than the metro would.

If you use the metro, a single ticket costs €1.20 and is valid for 90 minutes, a day ticket is €4.10 and a five-day ticket €8.20. Coming from the airport, Line 3 runs straight to Monastiraki for €9 one way or €16 return, which drops you closer to the gate than any other option. The walk from Monastiraki square is short but the lanes of Plaka around the entrance are narrow and easy to misread, so watch the street signs on Dioskouron rather than following the fence.

If the gate is shut

A closed gate at the Roman Agora costs you less than you might fear. The Gate of Athena Archegetis stands on the street line at the west end of the site, and it is visible and lit from the pavement at any hour, so you can study its columns and inscription without a ticket. The Tower of the Winds can also be seen over the fence from the lanes on the Plaka side, including its octagonal faces and the reliefs near the top.

What you lose when the gate is shut is the interior of the enclosure: the paving, the foundations and the water clock chamber. Sites shut on the fixed closure days such as 1 January, 1 May, Orthodox Easter Sunday and 25 and 26 December, and public-sector strikes can close state sites with little warning, so a locked gate is not always a schedule problem. Come back the next morning at 08:00.