Kerameikos Cemetery & Museum

Athens' ancient cemetery holds the tombs of its elite, buried with elaborate symposium equipment. The on-site museum displays wine vessels, drinking cups, and funerary offerings that show how central wine was to Greek afterlife beliefs. The famous "Street of Tombs" has carved reliefs depicting symposia, ensuring the dead could drink forever.

What to do there

3 things to do

1. 1 Touch the Clay That Made Every Symposium Cup Wine · Price: low

   Kerameikos was Athens' potters' quarter. Every krater, kylix and amphora used at Greek symposia was made in workshops on this street.

   The word 'ceramic' comes from this exact neighbourhood — kerāmos (pottery clay) → Kerameikos → ceramic. Every vessel ever used at an Athenian symposium was made HERE: amphorae for storing wine, kraters (large mixing bowls placed centre-table to blend wine with water), kylikes (shallow two-handled drinking cups for the kottabos game). In the on-site museum (included in €8/€4 entry), Room 1 contains the ceramics that equipped an entire drinking culture. Find the kylix — deliberately wide and shallow so the drinker had to tilt their head back. Find the krater — larger than you expect, where the symposium host mixed wine and water publicly to signal the drinking ratio for the evening.

   Backup: If the museum is busy, the site itself has in-situ pottery fragments visible in the excavated areas — look along the Street of Tombs for ceramic sherds still visible in the soil.

   Log Memory
2. 2 Find the Tomb Carved With a Symposium Scene History · Free

   The elite of Athens were buried with symposium carvings — ensuring they could drink forever in the afterlife.

   Athenian aristocrats chose symposium scenes for their grave monuments — not battle scenes, not religious iconography, but dinner parties with wine. The carvings show reclining figures holding kylikes, a krater between them, a flute-player providing music, because death was not the end of the symposium, just the next venue. Walk the Street of Tombs slowly (straight ahead from the Ermou St gate) — the original stelae are in the museum, but bases and reconstructed copies remain in position. Look for the grave of Dexileos (cavalry soldier, died 394 BCE) with its blend of military honour and the civilian symposium life he was leaving behind.

   Backup: The museum display clearly shows which original stelae had symposium imagery — Room 2 and 3 have funerary monuments with painted or carved vessel depictions.

   Log Memory
3. 3 Read the Wall at the Sacred Gate Where Armies Left Athens History · Free · Optional

   The Dipylon and Sacred Gates are at Kerameikos — where Athenian armies departed for war and returned for the Panathenaic festival procession.

   The Dipylon ('double gate') was the main city gate of ancient Athens and the largest in the ancient world, while the Sacred Gate led to Eleusis — BOTH are here at Kerameikos. This is where armies left for Marathon and Thermopylae, and when they returned victorious, they brought back wine as part of spoils and ritual celebration began at these very gates. Walk to the gate foundations (northwest edge of the site, past the Street of Tombs) and stand inside the Dipylon — you're in what was a massive enclosed courtyard between two gates, a security trap for enemies. The Panathenaic Way, the processional route to the Acropolis, started here.

   Backup: If site explanation is limited, the museum has a detailed scale model of the gate complex with the Panathenaic Way visible. The entrance pamphlet also shows the reconstructed gates.

   Log Memory

Insider tips

• The museum is small but exceptional

• Look for symposium scenes on the stelae

• This is where ancient potters worked (Kerameikos = ceramic)

• Usually far less crowded than other sites