Room IX. On the right, beautiful reliefs from the Nike balustrade (p. [513]); in the centre of the front row, *973. Nike loosening her sandal. On the left, Nos. 1071–78. Fragments of the relief-frieze of the Erechtheion.
c. Walk from the Palace to the Theseion. Dipylon. Hill of the Nymphs. Pnyx. Monument of Philopappos.
The upper or E. end of the Rue d’Hermès (Pl. E-B, 5), which leads to the W. from the Place de la Constitution, is one of the chief business quarters of Athens. Among the wares sold in the shops here are Oriental silks and woollen stuffs and antiquities, the latter dear and sometimes spurious.
A few paces to the S. of the Rue d’Hermès rises the Metropolitan Church (Pl. E, 5), erected in 1840–55 with the materials of seventy smaller churches and chapels, and sumptuously fitted up in the interior. Adjoining it on the S. is the so-called *Little Metropolis, or church of Panagia Gorgópiko, of the early 9th cent., the oldest extant Byzantine edifice on Greek soil. The walls, composed of antique blocks of stone, contain many ancient and Byzantine sculptures.
Halfway along the Rue d’Hermès is the Kapnikaræa Church (Pl. D, 5), a complex Byzantine building (9th cent.?). Just beyond it we cross the busy—
Rue d’Eole (Pl. D, 6–3), the second main street of the old town, where men in Greek costume are often seen. Following it to the S., towards the Acropolis, and passing the Place Panteleēmon, we come to the old Bazaar (Pl. D, 5), where tailors, shoemakers, and smiths ply their crafts in their open workshops.
Adjoining the bazaar on the S. is Hadrian’s Library (Pl. D, 5), with its back to the Rue d’Eole, a massive edifice of 134 by 90 yds.
A gate (keys at the provision-shop opposite) leads from the Rue d’Eole into the quadrangle, once bordered with a colonnade. The columns still standing and the building in the middle are restorations. On the wall of the large hall on the E. side are seen the places where the bookshelves were attached, as in the Pergamon library.
On the W. side of the library, reached from the outside, still stands the N. half of the main façade, known as Hadrian’s Stoa. The marble wall is embellished with seven monolithic columns, 28 ft. high, with rich Corinthian capitals. An eighth column with the wall of the anta belonged to the colonnade of the chief portal.—Near this is the Stoa of Attalos (p. [521]).
At the S. end of the Rue d’Eole rises the so-called Tower of the Winds (Pl. D, 6; custodian 20–30 l.), a well-preserved octagonal marble edifice of the 1st cent. B.C., more accurately named the Horológion of Andronikos of Kyrrhos. On the upper spaces of the eight walls, which are turned towards the different points of the compass, are reliefs representing the various winds; below are seen the lines of sun-dials. The round channels in the pavement inside, into which water flowed from a semicircular cistern outside, belonged to a water-clock.