Academy of Athens

This guide to the Academy of Athens follows twenty-six years of marble carving that ended in 1885 with a striking building and no institution to move in. It traces Simon Sinas, a Greek banker living in Vienna, who began funding the project in 1856 and hired Danish architect Theophil Hansen to echo the temples up on the Acropolis, and his wife Ifigeneia, who kept the money flowing after his death. Look up at the two columns before you, with Athena and Apollo keeping watch, and marble Plato and Socrates seated in conversation below.