Ancient Agora of Athens | Iron Man & Hephaestus Connection

Ancient Agora is the old market place of Ancient Athens. A political, cultural and economic center of the aincent world. The Temple of Hephaestus being the main attraction, I explain briefly the connection between the Greek gods and modern day superheroes e.g. Hephaestus and Iron Man.

[christinatsoupakis]

Hi Paul. Loving your videos, makes me miss my ancestral homeland. The museum you were in is actually one of the first indoor shopping malls in the world (so now you can tell folks you’ve been to one of the first malls in Europe 😂), known as the Stoa. It was built around 150 B.C. The shops would have stored things like food, wine, tools, clothing, pottery etc. in different shops much like modern day malls, a bit of everything. The building was reconstructed using the surviving marble and limestone and foundations in the 1950s.

The PanAthenaic games were like the Olympics but reserved mostly for Athenians and held in that massive stadium you ran in. (whereas the Olympia complex in southern Greece was for competitions with all Hellenes-hence the temporary peace message associated to this day-different Greek states and kingdoms were fighting on and off in antiquity accept for when the games were held-they’d come together and peacefully compete in both athletics and even the arts).

If you ever go back to Greece I recommend you visit ancient Olympia - the whole site and museum there is full of amazing stuff.

Another awesome place and not as well known is Ancient Messene, a very well preserved ancient city with a massive sports stadium so high up in the mountains you’ll question if they had a magic formula for running at such high altitudes. Yes, and the first modern olympics were held in the ancient stadium in Athens, so yes it is technically also an Olympic stadium. Great videos! 💙🇦🇺