Old Acropolis Museum

The Old Acropolis Museum stood on the eastern edge of the rock plateau of the Athenian Acropolis, where it was built into a recess and lay largely below the level of the hilltop. This archaeological museum, built between 1865 and 1874 by Panagis Kalkos and modernized in the 1950s, housed the most important finds from the excavations at the site for generations. The treasures on display included stone sculptures and bronze fragments from monuments such as the Parthenon, the Erechtheion, and the Propylaia, among them famous works like the Caryatids, the Kritios Boy, and the Parthenon Frieze. Because limited space on the rock plateau made expansion difficult, the Greek government decided in the late 1980s to build a new museum at the foot of the Acropolis. The old building closed in June 2007 so that the collection could be moved to the New Acropolis Museum, which opened in 2009. Historically, it is also worth noting that the drainage pipes of the old museum were blamed for a considerable share of the deterioration of the Acropolis structures.