The Ancient City of Athens: The Agora - Stoa.
The earliest archaeological excavations in the Athenian Agora were conducted by the Greek Archaeological Society in the 19th century. Since 1931 and continuing to the present day, the excavations have been conducted by the American School of Classical Studies in Athens.Just about every ancient and modern city includes a place for an agora, and the Agora of Athens, being located at the heart of the city, remained in use either as an assembly, as a commercial, or as a residential area for about 5000 years. Consequently the area has undergone countless building, destruction, and rebuilding cycles.Athenian Agora - 3D View Traders in the Agora Retail traders (known as kapeloi ) served as middlemen between the craftsmen and the consumer but were largely mistrusted in ancient times as unnecessary parasites (in his Politics Aristotle states that the kapeloi served a “kind of exchange which is justly censured; for it is unnatural and a mode by which men unfairly gain from one another”).
The Ancient Agora of Athens is the best-known example of an ancient Greek agora, located to the northwest of the Acropolis and bounded on the south by the hill of the Areopagus and on the west by the hill known as the Agoraios Kolonos, also called Market Hill. The Agora's initial use was for a commercial, assembly, or residential gathering place.The 10 tribes of the early Athenian democracy were named after 10 mythical heroes, selected by the oracle of Apollo at Delphi from a much larger, preliminary list of names provided by the Athenians. Each hero was represented by a bronze statue on the Monument of the Eponymous Heroes in the Athenian Agora.
Athenian Agora Located in the heart of modern Athens and attracting more than half a million international visitors annually, the Agora was in ancient times the business, political, and legal center of Athens, bringing together citizens and foreigners, litigants and jurors, and merchants and philosophers.
