The Peripatos ( grc, περίπατος, , walkway) is an ancient pathway that girds the
Acropolis
An acropolis was the settlement of an upper part of an ancient Greek city, especially a citadel, and frequently a hill with precipitous sides, mainly chosen for purposes of defense. The term is typically used to refer to the Acropolis of Athens, ...
in
Athens
Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital and largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh largest city in the European Union. Athens dominates ...
and intersects with the Panathenaic way on the north slope. It connects the
shrines that are interspersed around the Acropolis hill. A reading of
Thucydides
Thucydides (; grc, , }; BC) was an Athenian historian and general. His ''History of the Peloponnesian War'' recounts the fifth-century BC war between Sparta and Athens until the year 411 BC. Thucydides has been dubbed the father of "scientifi ...
2.17, which records that the shrines were erected within an area which it was forbidden to build or quarry called the Pelasgian ground, suggests that the peripatos follows the line of the archaic and now vanished
Pelasgic wall.
An inscription on a boulder of acropolis limestone from the north slope of the hill is the only epigraphic evidence of the pathway. It reads "Length of the Peripatos: five
stades and eighteen feet." This inscription is dated to the fourth century BCE, though it is possible that the path had been cleared and in use at least since the Periklean building programme by when the cave sanctuaries had been established.
Pausanias Pausanias ( el, Παυσανίας) may refer to:
*Pausanias of Athens, lover of the poet Agathon and a character in Plato's ''Symposium''
*Pausanias the Regent, Spartan general and regent of the 5th century BC
* Pausanias of Sicily, physician of t ...
in the second century CE makes mention of using the road to examine the
klepsydra and the Apollo cave.
Work was undertaken to restore the Peripatos beginning in 1977.
[International Meeting on the Restoration of the Erechtheum, UNESCO, 1977]
File:Peripatos inscription.JPG, Inscribed boulder
File:Peripatos Acropolis of Athens.JPG, View of the Peripatos
See also
*
Landscaping of the Acropolis of Athens
Notes
Bibliography
*R. E. Wycherley, The Stones of Athens, 1978.
*J. M. Camp. The Archaeology of Athens, 2001.
*J. Travlos, Pictorial dictionary of Ancient Athens, 1970.
*Weibke Friese, On the Peripatos: Accessibility and Topography of the Acropolis Slope Sanctuaries in Ascending and descending the Acropolis: Movement in Athenian Religion, edited by Wiebke Friese, Soren Handberg, Troels Myrup Kristensen, 2019.
{{Acropolis of Athens
Landmarks in Athens
Ancient Greek buildings and structures in Athens
Monuments and memorials in Greece
Late Classical Greece