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The sacred rock of the Acropolis was for many centuries the most important religious centre of the city of Athens. The first traces of occupation go back to the Neolithic period. In Mycenaean times it was the seat of the king, whose megaron stood roughly on the site on which the Erechtheion was built many centuries later. After the 11th c. BC it became the home of the cult of Athena, patron goddess of the city that took her name, and of other gods, and was adorned down to the end of antiquity with majestic temples, brilliant buildings and a vast number of votive monuments. In the middle of the 5th c. BC, when Athens was at the height of its power, the ambitious artistic programme of Perikles was implemented: the Parthenon, the Propylaea and, a little later, the temple of Athena Nike and the Erechtheion, were all erected between 447 and 406 BC, remaining to the present day witnesses to the Greek Classical civilisation.
