Acropolis of Athens: free audio guide, hours and tickets

The Acropolis of Athens is the walled rock above the city and the site on top of it: the Parthenon, the Propylaea, the Erechtheion and the Temple of Athena Nike, with the Theatre of Dionysus cut into the south slope below. One ticket, €30.00, covers the rock and its slopes. From 16 to 31 October it opens 08:00 to 18:00, and from 1 November 08:00 to 17:00. This is its free audio guide.

What the audio guide tells you

It is free, about 7 minutes long, and it plays in your phone’s browser, no app and no sign-up. It follows the climb: ramp and gateway, then the plateau, the slopes on the way down.

Some points of interest described in the Audio Guide of the Acropolis of Athens:

Free audio guideTemple of Athena Nike

Part of the Parthenon’s sculpture is not in Athens: Lord Elgin’s agents removed it between 1801 and 1812, it has been on show since 1817 in Room 18 of the British Museum in London, free to enter, and Greece has long asked for its return.

Opening hours: 08:00 to 18:00 from 16 to 31 October

Between 16 and 31 October the site is open 08:00 to 18:00, and the last entrance is at 17:30. From 1 September the closing time steps back every fortnight, so the hour that matters is the one for your date.

It is closed on 1 January, 25 March, 1 May, Easter Sunday, 25 and 26 December; the North Slope has kept a shorter day, 08:30 to 15:30, since 1 November 2025. Checked on 19 September 2026 against the Ministry of Culture’s listing and the official visitor site.

Tickets: €30.00, what it covers and when it is free

The full ticket is €30.00 and the reduced one €15.00, the price charged by the state ticket office. Bought online it carries a time slot, changeable up to 2 hours before and up to 2 times, and not refundable. Inside the fence nothing is charged again: the Parthenon has no gate, hours or price of its own, though it has a guide of its own here. The Ancient Agora, down the slope, is a separate enclosure at €20.00.

Free audio guideParthenon

The detail worth planning around is that it is used once. It is the “Acropolis and Slopes” ticket, and the Ministry’s listing states that once you leave either the Acropolis or the South Slope you cannot re-enter with it. The slopes are therefore not a separate afternoon: the Theatre of Dionysus, the Odeon of Pericles and the Asclepeion are the way down, through the South Exit, on the signage that starts after the Beulé Gate.

There are days when everybody walks in free: 6 March, 18 April, 18 May, 28 October, the first and third Sunday of each month from 1 November to 31 March, and the last weekend of September — which in 2026 is Saturday 26 and Sunday 27, for the European Heritage Days, when the Acropolis Museum is free too from 17:00 to 20:00. Nothing is booked on a free day: come at 08:00.

Some visitors walk in free on any day, with ID: everyone under 18, 18- to 25-year-olds from Greece or the EU, and visitors with a disability of 67% or more plus 1 companion.

The way in: the Main Entrance, the South Slope and the lift

Metro Acropolis (line 2) and Dionysiou Areopagitou is the plain way in, about 12 minutes on foot; bus 230 stops there too. You can also start low at the South Slope gate, on Dionysiou Areopagitou and Thrasyllou, or come from Monastiraki (lines 1 and 3) straight across the site of the Ancient Agora.

The rock has had a lift for visitors with reduced mobility since 2020, from a separate entrance north of the Main Entrance on the West Slope, along a route of about 350 m, and it rises about 25 m to the plateau north of the Erechtheion. It does not run in strong winds or severe weather, so ring the Chief Guard’s Office on +30 213 1317762 1 hour before you arrive. Entry for visitors with disabilities is only at the Main Entrance, not the South one.

The cloakroom is outside, north of the Main Entrance, and does not take large luggage; small backpacks and handbags are allowed in.

The hill you look back from: Lycabettus, at 277 m

Athens has a second hill, and its old story is tied to this one: Athena was carrying a mountain from Pallene to set as a defence in front of the Acropolis when a crow met her with bad news, and she flung it down where Lycabettus now stands.

What it left behind is the best view of the rock in the city. Lycabettus Hill reaches 277 m, against the 160 m the Ministry gives for the Acropolis rock: from the summit you look down on the whole enclosure at once. The hill is public and free to walk up; the funicular from Kolonaki costs €10.00 one way and €13.00 return and, per its operator, runs every 30 minutes from 09:00 to 02:30 — long after the rock shuts for the day.

Nearby, with their own free audio guides

• Parthenon — inside this fence, on this €30.00 ticket: no gate and no hours of its own.
• Ancient Agora of Athens — €20.00, entered from the Thiseio Square gate since 1 July 2025, while Adrianou 24 is rebuilt.
• Temple of Hephaestus — on the hill at the western edge of the Ancient Agora, about 600 m north-west of the rock as the crow flies, and on that same €20.00 ticket: its 34 Doric columns, its entablature and both pediments still stand.
• Temple of Olympian Zeus — €20.00, 7 minutes on foot from the Acropolis metro; 15 columns stand and 1 lies where a storm dropped it in 1852.
• Odeon of Herodes Atticus — at the western end of the South Slope, on this €30.00 ticket: the Roman theatre whose stage wall rises over Dionysiou Areopagitou street. Its interior has been closed since 1 July 2026 for a restoration of 3 years or more, so you look at it from outside.

All of them, and the rest of the city, are on the free audio guides of Athens page. The same guide in Spanish, written and narrated for a Spanish-speaking visitor, is at Acrópolis de Atenas en vozviajera.com.