By my school's way of counting, today was the end of first week. But, because I'm on study abroad and every one week is like 3-4, in order to cram three quarters into one... I have no idea where I'm at, school-calendar-wise. However, I know for sure that I've finished my first week of classes, and gotten into a rhythm here in Athens... which will promptly be ruined by the fact that I have next Monday off entirely, next Tuesday morning off, and then leave on Wednesday for a three-day trip to the Argolid. Also, as a head's up, I have no clue what my Internet capabilities, or my time to blog, will be like during that trip, so you may not hear from me between Tuesday and Friday. I promise I won't be dead... but if you don't see a huge post from me by Sunday after the trip, start making inquiries into my livelihood.
Anyway, today was the first of two trips to the Acropolis Museum, which has to be one of the most gorgeous museums I've ever been to (and I have been to a lot of museums; I'd list them for you, but then you'll get bored and leave). There was no photography inside the museum, so I can't show you much, but the outside looked like this:
The top level of the building is at an angle to the rest for more than just architecturally looking cool. It's actually set up so that the artifacts inside perfectly line up with their orientation in situ on the Parthenon, which the top level is aligned with. On the lower levels, they're set up to line up with their respective other buildings on the Acropolis. It's really very, very well thought out.
And, even cooler, is this:
This museum is actually built over an neighborhood of ancient Athens, which is really, really neat. There are glass panels in the floor so that you can look down and see the site below you, as you explore the artifacts found around the Acropolis. The range of ages, too, is amazing. Even after just a week, I started to get into a mindset of "There's super old stuff (ruins), then there's sort of old stuff (old churches), then there's new stuff (anything modern)". But it isn't that simple: there's a good 3000 years or so of history on the Acropolis, which can be divided up into couple hundred year or less chunks of time. Intellectually, I know that's true: I mean, that's what we talk about in lecture, is each of these bits of time and their significance individually and in a larger whole, but that doesn't tend to stick with me very well. I'm used to thinking of time on a much larger scale, millions and billions of years rather than hundreds and thousands, so without anything concrete, it just blurs together. Seeing it concrete like this, however, and being able to see the distinctions that allow historians and archaeologists to break up the time, just like geologists break up time by changes in the climate or landscape or fossil record, makes it so much more real. Seeing these sites and artifacts in the round allows me break out of the mindset of "new, old, and ancient."
Anyway, today was the first of two trips to the Acropolis Museum, which has to be one of the most gorgeous museums I've ever been to (and I have been to a lot of museums; I'd list them for you, but then you'll get bored and leave). There was no photography inside the museum, so I can't show you much, but the outside looked like this:
The top level of the building is at an angle to the rest for more than just architecturally looking cool. It's actually set up so that the artifacts inside perfectly line up with their orientation in situ on the Parthenon, which the top level is aligned with. On the lower levels, they're set up to line up with their respective other buildings on the Acropolis. It's really very, very well thought out.
And, even cooler, is this:
This museum is actually built over an neighborhood of ancient Athens, which is really, really neat. There are glass panels in the floor so that you can look down and see the site below you, as you explore the artifacts found around the Acropolis. The range of ages, too, is amazing. Even after just a week, I started to get into a mindset of "There's super old stuff (ruins), then there's sort of old stuff (old churches), then there's new stuff (anything modern)". But it isn't that simple: there's a good 3000 years or so of history on the Acropolis, which can be divided up into couple hundred year or less chunks of time. Intellectually, I know that's true: I mean, that's what we talk about in lecture, is each of these bits of time and their significance individually and in a larger whole, but that doesn't tend to stick with me very well. I'm used to thinking of time on a much larger scale, millions and billions of years rather than hundreds and thousands, so without anything concrete, it just blurs together. Seeing it concrete like this, however, and being able to see the distinctions that allow historians and archaeologists to break up the time, just like geologists break up time by changes in the climate or landscape or fossil record, makes it so much more real. Seeing these sites and artifacts in the round allows me break out of the mindset of "new, old, and ancient."
