Thursday, May 19, 2011

Longer opening hours for Athens Acropolis

Greece is to extend the opening hours of the Acropolis in Athens due to public demand, Culture Minister Pavlos Geroulanos announced Thursday.

The site will open from 8:00 am (0500 GMT) to 19:00 pm (1600 GMT) year-round after staffing changes prompted by a restructure of the country's public bodies.
"It's a first," said Geroulanos, who added that longer hours had been desired "for a long time."
Until now the Unesco World Heritage Site, home to the Parthenon, opened from 8:00 am to 17:00 pm from September to April and until sunset during the remainder of the year.
This meant it sometimes closed as early as 15:00 pm, to the disappointment of tourists who travel hundreds of miles to see the Acropolis, one of Greece's most visited sites which attracts about a million people each year.




AFP