Pireaus

On our penultimate date in Greece, we decided to visit the waterfront.  We had been there very briefly the last trip to take a ferry to Aigina, but that was just the commercial harbor.  This time, owing to an 8:00pm dinner reservation, we gave ourselves some time to really explore Piraeus.

We started at the Archaeological Museum, which also included the Zeas Ampitheatre.  The site wasn't much to look at being poorly maintained, and with neither distance nor elevation to get a sense of the structure, but as has been demonstrated repeatedly to use over the course of this trip, that is the norm for less touristy sites.

The more amusing thing about this photo is that they kept part of the collection outside along the left side covered walkway.

The museum itself was well organized, and had some interesting exhibits inasmuch as they had 2 or more of the same type of thing and placed them next to each other so you could compare and contrast, and they set up one room as the interior of a temple (not to scale).

Representation of the interior of a Temple of the Mother of the Gods

It also contained a lot of other detailed information about the history of Piraeus as a shipyard and fortress site, but that was discussed at other sites.

From there, we wandered a couple of blocks away to see the city center, but this was a bust for the weeds and trees.  Then another couple of blocks away to see one of three gates to the city.  Just for geographical and historical context, Athens is about 7km away from the harbor, so sometime in the 5th c. BC, two long walls were built to defend access from the city to the harbor.  

As typically happened during the intervening time, the walls were destroyed by a war (with the Persians in c. 480 BC) and then rebuilt, better and stronger, and later a third wall was constructed as well an another gate.  Well, here is what remains of one of the gates:

From the ground these were nearly impossible to parse, and even from the 2nd floor of the adjacent building it is still a mess.  This is what this is supposed to look like:

Still doesn't parse very well, but fortunately, there was an exhibit called "Unearthed" which discussed the archaeological find which had only been discovered during the expansion of the metro line to Piraeus.  The construction has been delayed while the excavation work is completed, and this causes a lot of annoyance with Greek citizens, not just in and around Athens but anywhere in the country as whenever there is a finding which might be archaeologically significant, construction must stop for "rescue excavation".  We got to chat with someone from the exhibit who told us about people trying to build houses and if they found something, then would try to cover it up and then build the house faster overnight so no one would know.  I would liken this in Massachusetts to finding colonial or Native American artifacts especially during the Big Dig, or to some developers desire to tear down potentially historic structures before they can be registered.  Regardless, since basically the entire country is an archeological site, it is a difficult balance between recognizing and preserving their history and culture, while trying to function in the modern era.  And just to give you an idea of how long it will likely be before the metro line is finished, this is just a sample of what the are sorting, with more in the basement and still to be unearthed:

My eyes lit up at the challenge of this 3D puzzle...

But Piraeus was and still is the main port, with several harbors.  In my research, I read that the dockyards had been discovered in the late 80's while someone was trying to dig an underground parking garage (seriously?  did they not think they would hit ruins?) but couldn't find anything about an archaeological site.  Dutifully, we walked Zea Harbor, to the block indicated, and found this:

Unfortunately, these we could only view through windows into the basement, and even for the signs with drawings and blueprints, it is difficult to grasp what you are seeing.  But in all fairness, I'm not sure that even were I to wander through them, I would understand the configuration, much less the scale, since these shipyards were 10-20m tall and 30m deep, not constrained in a small basement crawlspace.

The waterfront was not something we had time to explore last trip, and besides the archaeological significance, Piraeus was something of an thriving metropolitan suburb on Athens, and since it was boasted the waterfront, it felt very much like Palm Beach/West Palm Beach.  And after 7 hours of wandering through Piraeus entirely on foot, we ended our night with a beautiful meal at Varoulko Seaside a 1-star Michelin restaurant which chef/owner opened after he closed the one we visited on our first trip with the Acropolis view.