Hello and welcome! to another A-Z series on M-i-V.
All through April I'll be posting on the broad theme of Museums & Monuments Across the World - mostly those I've been to and a few on my bucket list that I haven't visited yet. Museums are one of my favourite ways to get to know a culture, they sum up what the people of that culture want to preserve and pass onto their grandchildren, the facets they want to show their foreign visitors, how they perceive, present and preserve their own storyline and that of their interactions with the world. Come museum hopping with me!
A is for Acropolis, Athens
Greece is the grandmother of the Western civilisation, the origin of origins - Western art, architecture, literature, theatre, music, whole entire concepts of democracy and philosophy. If you're into ancient cultures, Athens is a must visit!
The Acropolis of Athens is a citadel situated on a hill above the city of Athens, a greatly significant complex of buildings dating back to 5th century BCE, whopping 2500 years old. There is a site museum, the Acropolis Museum, which opened in 2009, so when I visited it in 2010 it was spanking new. I remember walking on a glass walkway into the museum which showed the ruins that had been excavated below, the different strata where the objects exhibited inside had been found - the timeline come alive underfoot - it was superbly awesome.
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| The Parthenon, the most important building in the complex. The gold standard of classical architecture. |
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| The view from the Museum terrace. |
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| The Erechtheion. |
The Acropolis Museum is visited by more than 2 million people in a year, it receives 7000-8000 visitors daily and is one of the top rated attractions in Greece as well as globally. The Archaeological Museum receives over half a million visitors in comparison.
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| Another treasure trove of Greek history. The National Archeological Museum. |
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| An exhibit inside - Paris holding the Golden Apple. |
A is also for Amman
Amman is the capital of Jordan, another country with a deep and long history. All of the Middle-East actually. Because that's where the first civilisation happened, the first alphabet was devised and presto! - prehistory stopped being pre- and morphed to history in one fell swoop, something that humans recorded and archived for their descendants to read and figure thousands of years later, understand and marvel at what their foreparents' lives were like long after they were gone. A goosebumps inducing moment and a goosebumps inducing place.
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| Macabre and moving at the same time. A child's remains from 6500 years ago. |
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| Jordan is truly ancient. The museum has stone tools from 80,000 years ago, Yarmoukian pottery n stuff like that unimaginably old. |
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| Replica of the dome of the bath in Jericho from Hisham's Palace - Islamic era architecture from the 8th century. |
Read more about the National Archaeological Museum of Jordan in Amman by clicking the link here. The site will also give you an idea of the other museums to visit in that area.
Visitor numbers for the Museum specifically are not readily available, however the Amman Citadel where the museum is located clocks around 125,000 visitors annually. Petra, the star attraction of Jordan, gets four times as much.
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Did you know that the Ancient World had museums too? The Ennigaldi-Nanna's museum in Ur is the first known public museum, dated to 530 BCE, nearly 2500 years old! Clearly, the tendency to collect pretty/important things and put them on display is a timeless human trait.
Thank you for reading. Have a wonderful A-Z if you are taking the Challenge and a wonderful April if you're not!
Posted for the A-Z Challenge 2026
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