In the wake of recent archaeological discoveries (e.g., the restoration of the Peripatos route on the eastern slope of the Acropolis), a richly suggestive debate has opened up on the subject of the location of Athenian public spaces.
From a methodological point of view, it's a question of comparing the limited material data from the eastern slopes and Pausanias' autopsy with the rich bibliography generated by the major American excavations of the Kerameikòs agora.
But it's not just the identification of places and topographical accuracy that are at stake. In my lectures, I have also proposed new historical interpretations of how the public space we know as the Athens agora came to be structured.
In fact, while we can say little - almost nothing, in fact - about the square known as the agora archaia (which was probably to the east, and whose existence we barely manage to perceive, with all the caution due to the recomposition of data through literary sources, but also through Pausanias), the situation of the square under the kolonòs agoraios is much better known. Here, a new reading of the archaeological sequence allows us to follow the evolution in the occupation of the space. Two main phases are visible: on the one hand, the center of power under the tyrants, who lived in this space and concentrated their festivities, musical performances, dancing and sporting competitions here, and on the other, the new great agora that would emerge after the reforms we know as democracy from the last years of the 6th century BC.
