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Ancient Athens map
Ancient Athens city map. Ancient Athens map (Greece) to print. Ancient Athens map (Greece) to download. Some three centuries after the death of Pericles (429 BCE), Athenians entered upon a period of bondage that lasted almost 2,000 years. The ancient Athens was freed in 1833, and in the following 170 years it was the scene of more than a dozen revolutions, another brutal foreign occupation, and a civil war of especial savagery (see ancient Athens map). This long history of passion and suffering of ancient Athens has had considerable effect on the Athenian character.
The site of ancient Athens has been inhabited since the Neolithic Period (before 3000 BCE). Evidence for this has come from pottery finds on and around the Acropolis but particularly from a group of about 20 shallow wells, or pits, on the northwest slope of the Acropolis (see ancient Athens map), just below the Klepsydra spring. These wells contained burnished pots of excellent quality, which show that even at this remote period ancient Athens had a settled population and high technical and artistic standards.
From the heroic struggle against the Barbarians to the fratricidal struggles that precipitated its decline, the destiny of ancient Athens sums up that of Greece. Cradle of Western civilization to which it bequeathed the foundations of the democratic regime, ancient Athens exerted an immense fascination on the ancient world. She was the soul of the Greek resistance to the invasions, from the Persians to the Macedonians (see ancient Athens map). She knew how to reconcile freedom with one of the most effective imperialisms of Antiquity. But it finally succumbed in front of a hegemony more powerful than its, that of Alexander the Great.