Hadrian's Library

Stand at the iron railing on Areos Street and let the noise of Monastiraki settle around you. Behind you, the metro rumbles, vendors call out, and the smell of grilled meat drifts up from the side streets. In front of you rises a row of tall, grey-green columns with fluted tops. They have stood here for almost nineteen hundred years. Below them lies a quiet field of stone, grass and scattered fragments, sunk a little lower than the modern pavement.

This is Hadrian's Library. It was built in the second century, around 132 by most accounts, on the orders of the Roman emperor Hadrian. He ruled from Rome but loved Greece, and Athens in particular. He visited the city more than once and paid for new buildings, new streets and even a new quarter. This library was one of his most generous gifts. It was not a small reading room. It was a large walled complex in the heart of the city.

Look closely at those columns on the western front. Their surface is streaked with wavy green and white veins, a little like the skin of an onion. This stone came from Karystos, on the island of Euboea, and the Romans valued it highly. The wall behind the columns is a lighter, smoother marble. Together they formed the grand entrance, a monumental gateway that faced the old market. Every visitor who came here first passed through this front.

Now picture what lay inside. The walls enclosed a large rectangular courtyard surrounded on all sides by a covered colonnade. In the centre, there was a long pool of water, with a garden around it. People walked in the shade, talked and read. On the far eastern side stood the rooms that held the books. In the ancient world, these were scrolls of papyrus, stored in niches set into the walls.

We know something of how the place looked because a traveller described it. Pausanias was a Greek writer of the second century who wrote a long guide to the sites of Greece. In a way, he wrote the ancestor of the audio guide you are listening to now. He noted columns of Phrygian marble, a gilded roof, alabaster, statues and paintings. And he mentioned that books were kept here. For a visitor in his time, this was one of the finest buildings in Athens.

Here is a detail that many visitors miss. This was not only a library in the modern sense. It was also a public space, a kind of cultural forum. Scholars believe it may have held archives and lecture halls as well as books. Think of it as a mix of library, garden, and meeting place, all behind high walls. It offered calm in a crowded city, which is not so different from what you feel now, looking in from the busy street.

The calm did not last. In the third century, a people from the north known as the Heruli raided Athens and caused heavy damage across the city. The library was badly hit. Afterwards, Athens shrank and built a new defensive wall, and parts of this complex became part of that later fortification. A building made for reading turned into a line of defence. You can still see how solid and thick the outer walls are.

The next chapter belongs to the Christian era. In the early fifth century, a church was built in the middle of the old courtyard. It had an unusual plan with four curved apses, one on each side, like the four petals of a flower. Archaeologists call this shape a tetraconch. Later, other churches rose on the same spot. The site kept a sacred role for many centuries, as the city around it changed again and again.

Under Ottoman rule, which began in the fifteenth century, the area became part of the town's market district. Shops and workshops crowded around the ancient walls. The local governor also had his residence nearby. The ruins did not disappear. Instead, they were built into the everyday life of the bazaar. Columns stood beside shops, and old stone became the backbone of new walls. This layering is typical of Athens, where every age builds on top of the last.

Here is a second surprise. Much of what you see today came to light because of a disaster. In 1884, a large fire swept through the old bazaar here. It destroyed many of the buildings that had covered the site. After the fire, archaeologists began to clear and study the area. Excavation work continued for many decades afterwards. So in a way, the flames of the nineteenth century opened a window onto the second century.

Now turn a little and look at the square around you. Just beside the library stands a small mosque with a dome, built in the eighteenth century during Ottoman rule. Nearby is the little Byzantine church of the Pantanassa, which gave Monastiraki its name — the word means little monastery. Look up, and above the rooftops you can see the rock of the Acropolis. In one glance, you take in classical, Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman Athens.

If you walk inside the site, take your time along the edges of the courtyard. You will find foundations of the later churches, bases of columns and the outline of the old pool. Signs help you read the different layers. The ground is uneven in places, so watch your step. It is usually quieter inside than on the street, and you may hear birds in the trees. A short walk to the south brings you to the Roman Agora and its marble Tower of the Winds.

Before you move on, look once more at the green-veined columns. Rest your eyes on the space between them, where readers once passed through on their way to the scrolls. Then listen to the square behind you — the trains, the voices, the music from a café. Athens is still a place where people gather, trade and talk. As you walk away into the streets of Monastiraki, you are walking through the same city, in a new chapter.