Listen to the fickle winds of the Aerida, stroll through the market square of Roman Athens, see the mosque of the Ottoman conquerors... This is the journey through centuries of Athenian history offered by the Roman Forum.
A marvelous architectural ensemble silently preserves its history at the foot of the Acropolis of Athens, and its name is the Roman Forum. This place is amazing because in one square gathered artifacts not only of different eras, but also of different peoples. The colonnade of the Roman Forum, the only surviving part of the Athenian marketplace, was not built by the Greeks but by Julius Caesar himself, and later by his successor, Augustus. At the same time, the Tower of the Winds bears witness to an even earlier construction; it is an architectural monument that has survived for millennia before appearing in modern-day Athens. Nearby is a medieval mosque, a reminder of the troubled days of Ottoman rule.
Each of the ancient civilizations left their mark on the Roman Forum, a small patch of Hellenic land, the view from the top of the Acropolis. Despite the fact that the only reminder of the Forum itself is a half-destroyed colonnade, you can imagine how magnificent this Roman structure was. The floor of the main commercial square was made of snow-white marble - but now the lush grasses replace the stone slabs. And just like the ancient Greeks, today's travelers can walk from the market square to its main attraction, the Tower of the Winds.
The sight of this monument is as unusual as the fact that the Aerida is superbly preserved for a structure with more than a thousand years of history. Erected by the Macedonian astronomer Andronicus, a scholar from Cyrene, this marble tower originally served as a sanctuary to Athena Archegetides. Oriented by its eight facets, like the Rose of the Winds, exactly to the sides of the world, the tower helped to know the direction of the air currents. The roof of the building once housed a mythological newt in the shape of a triton, which turned in the direction of the wind.
The tip of the outhouse pointed to one of the Greek winds looking slyly out of the frieze of the tower. Whether the cold Boreas was raging or the southern Noth came to the city with rains, a glance at Aerida was enough for the Athenians to know. But the Tower of the Winds was not only a meteorological monument. It was a structure that told the time by the sun, and when the light disappeared behind the clouds, a hydraulic clock was set in motion. The spring on the Acropolis fed the Aeris, allowing the Greeks to remain punctual even on cloudy days.
The Roman Agora is also famous for its other landmark, the Fethiye Jami Mosque. Although the mosque is the youngest building on the Forum itself, in Athens it is considered to be the oldest artifact from the Ottoman period. Built in honor of the great Mehmet Fatih, who conquered Constantinople, the mosque was built along with a Muslim madrasah. While the second building did not survive its ordeal, the mosque stands to this day as a striking accompaniment to the architectural ensemble of Athens.
