Skulls in the Stars

The last in my series of blog posts about my recent trips to Finland and Greece. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 can be read at the links.

My flight out of Athens on my day of departure was not until 7 pm, thanks to my budget-conscious travel planning.  This meant that I had pretty much a whole morning and afternoon to further explore the city, and there was one obvious place to go: the National Archaeological Museum, which contains some of the most famous and magnificent artifacts of Greek history.

Panorama of the National Archaeological Museum.

The museum itself has a pretty significant history.  The first national archaeological museum was opened in 1829, though apparently the collection traveled between exhibition locations until the current building was planned in 1858 and constructed in 1889.  During World War II, the museum was closed and the collection was boxed and buried to prevent it from being looted; it reopened in 1945.  The museum was closed for a complete refurbishment around 2002 and remained so for 1.5 years; it opened in time for the 2004 Athens Olympics.

I took soooooooo many photos while at the museum.  For all of our sakes, I’ll try and restrict this post to some of the coolest and most interesting things that I saw, though that will be hard!

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In my last travel post, I talked about my first evening in Athens, in which I walked around with a new friend and explored the Acropolis and a number of other ancient sites.  The next day I had all to myself, and I vowed to see as much of the city’s history as I could.

My first stop in the morning was the magnificent Acropolis Museum, holding archaeological artifacts from the famed site.

The Acropolis Museum.

This is actually the second Acropolis Museum; the original one was built on the Acropolis itself in 1874 and was renovated in the 1950s. However, the size of the collection increased as the Acropolis area was further excavated, and it was decided in the 1970s that a new museum was needed.  The decision was also motivated by the fact that many of the friezes of the Parthenon were acquired by the British Museum under shady circumstances, and British Museum officials argued that they couldn’t return them because Athens did not have a suitable location to house them.

In the image above, you can see a glass walkway.  When the new museum started construction in the 1990s, based on the winning design of the third competition to design the museum, it was discovered that the site held ancient ruins of archaeological significance. A fourth competition to design a museum that could protect the ruins, and the final museum design — opened in 2009 — is built raised above the site!  Both outside and inside the museum, one can look down to see the excavations, which are still in progress.

Excavations beneath the entrance to the museum.

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In my last travel post, I described a little bit of the island of Spetses in Greece, where my second optics workshop took place. As the workshop schedule didn’t include any crucial talks on the last day I was originally planning to be there, I opted to head back a day early to Athens.  I was also, admittedly, a little anxious about the logistics of getting back, since it required another lengthy boat trip.

I need not have worried, though. The boat back was a high-speed catamaran with a blessed name, and the trip passed quickly and in comfort.

Kitty-maran.

A final view of Spetses from the kitty-maran.

I arrived at my Athens hotel in the early afternoon but had to wait until around 3:00 to check in. Once I did, and took a bit of a rest, I took the complimentary hotel shuttle to Athens’ most famous and historical landmark: the Acropolis.

First view of the Acropolis.

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