Old Acropolis Museum

The Old Acropolis Museum was the original museum built on the Acropolis to house finds from the first excavations on the Sacred Rock. According to the official history of the Acropolis Museum, the first museum on the site was founded in 1865, completed in 1874, and later expanded with a second small building in 1888 as new finds continued to emerge.

Today it is best understood as a historic former museum rather than an active one. The old museum ceased operating in 2007, and the collections were transferred to the New Acropolis Museum, which opened in 2009 on Dionysiou Areopagitou. For visitors, the value of this record is historical context: it helps explain where Acropolis finds were originally displayed before the modern museum era.