Platonic Academy

In the northern Athens neighbourhood of Akademia Platonos lies the site where Plato founded his philosophical school around 387 BC. Aristotle studied here for twenty years, and after Plato's death pupils continued the Academy for more than nine hundred years, until Emperor Justinian closed it in 529 AD. Today the site is an open archaeological park with the wall remains of a gymnasium, the sanctuary of the hero Akademos and the foundations of Hellenistic houses. Step away from the Acropolis crowds and you find a quiet, olive-shaded plot that holds one of the most consequential addresses in the history of thought, and surprisingly few fellow visitors.