Dionysos, Greece
Encyclopedia
Dionysos is a residential suburb and a municipality in northeastern Attica
, Greece
— just about 23 km northeast of Athens
. The seat of the municipality is the town Agios Stefanos. Dionysos is almost purely residential, but there are a few shops.
mountains and its forests that are dominating the south. Another series of mountains and forests lie to the north. Much of the municipality is forested. Dionysos since the mid to late 1980s is connected with the urban sprawl
of Athens but it is east of the agglomeration of Athens as well as the Megali Daktylo. The residential area covers the western part of the municipality. Dionysos is passed by a road linking to the mountains and to Nea Makri. Dionysos is accessed with an interchange with GR-1
/E75
(Athens - Lamia - Thessaloniki) at the 19th km 8 km NE and at the 21st km near Varympompi 8 km SE and GR-83
which is also known as Theseos (Theseus
) Avenue to the west. The Athenian plain lies to the west. Dionysos is located SE of Thiva, S of Euboea
and Oropos
, SW of Marathon
, NE of Kifissia
and NE of the Attiki Odos
(number 6).
Even though the town is located only 20 Kilometres away from central Athens, it has a completely different climate, with weather being significantly cooler, including frequent snowfall during the winter.
, ancient Greek god of vegetation, wine, and theatre.
The local myth is told by several ancient writers: Athenaios, Hyginos, Apollodoros, and Nonnos. In this green valley thousands of years ago, the local leader Icarius of Athens and his lovely daughter Erigone
welcomed a young stranger into their home, offering him fresh goat’s milk as well as food and shelter. Moved by their warm hospitality, the stranger revealed to them that he was actually a god, Dionysos, son of Zeus
(king of the gods) and Semele
(a princess of Thebes
). In order to thank them, Dionysos gave Ikarios the first grape vine and taught him the art of wine
making.
Delighted with this wonderful drink which brought happiness and drowned sorrows, Ikarios filled several goatskin bags with wine and traveled around the countryside sharing the new drink with the local inhabitants. Unfortunately, some shepherds on Mount Pendeli drank too much of the magic drink, ‘unwatered’, and began to feel dizzy and see double. They suspected that Ikarios had poisoned them, and in their drunken state, they killed him.
When they awoke the next day and found Ikarios dead, they realized their terrible mistake. Fearfully they buried his body under a pine tree and ran away, some say to the island of Kea
. The only witness to this crime was Erigone’s little dog, Maera, who ran home howling and pulled Erigone to the spot where her father had been buriedand scratched at the soil. Realizing that her father was dead, Erigone fell into a deep depression and hanged herself from a branch of the pine tree. Before she died, she or the god Dionysos called down a curse on the young women of Attika, that they should suffer the same fate as she had. The people of Athens were horrified when they began to find their daughters hanged from trees here and there and, ignorant of the cause, they appealed to the oracle of the god Apollo at Delphi to explain the deaths. The oracle directed them to find and properly bury the bodies of Ikarios and Erigone, and to track down and punish the murderers. Furthermore, the people were instructed to sacrifice the first grapes harvested every year to the memory of Ikarios and celebrate the ‘Αιωρα’ festival in honour of Erigone, when the young maidens would swing on swings under the trees and sing a song called the ‘αλητη’.
Out of this first tragic contact between the god Dionysos and the people of Attika, there arose the earliest Dioysiac worship, in the deme
called Ikaria or Ikarion, the present day village of Dionysos. The local inhabitants continued to worship Dionysos for centuries in a festival which included drinking and feasting, singing and dancing, and parading round the village with a goat to sacrifice. In the 6th century BC, a local man named Thespis
combined many of these elements into a new form of worshipful entertainment which he created, Τραγωοιδια or Tragedy
. Every year in the month Poseidonia
(early winter), the Ikarians would host the drama festival, "Τα Εν Αγροις Διονυσια’ (Rural Dionysia) to honour their favourite god, Dionysos. They even remembered the local heroes of the myth by putting them in the sky as constellations: Ikarios was the star Arcturus in the consellation Bootes, Erigone was Virgo
, and Maera was the Lesser Dog Star, Procyon
.
Although the deme of Ikaria was most famous for its worship of Dionysos, it was also well known for the high quality white marble quarried there, a reputation which it maintains even today. During the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., all of Attika was divided into approximately 170 demes (villages), each of which sent one or more Βουλευτες (representatives) to the Βουλη (Council) of 500 to govern on a daily basis. The demes were then grouped into τριττυες, which in turn were combined to make ten Attic tribes based solely on a man’s residence, not any social status. Ikaria was such a large deme that it sent five (5) representatives annually to the Council of 500, and it belonged to the tribe Αεγεις, named after the Attic hero Aegeus
who also gave his name to the Aegean Sea.
The archaeological site, to the left of Odos Bomou Dionysou heading towards Rapendosa in Dionysos, was the town center (εδρα) of ancient Ikarion and has many interesting features even today. To begin with, this spot was always associated with the name Dionysos and never lost its sacred nature. When worship of the ancient god ceased, a small Byzantine Christian church was built in the sanctuary and, as far as is known, it was dedicated to Saint Dionysios. It was rebuilt in the Middle Ages, but when Greece became a free nation once again (1821), it was already a ruin, destroyed during the Turkish occupation (1456-1821).
In 1886, a German traveler A. Milchhofer passed by and observed many ancient marble blocks built into the walls of the ruined Byzantine chapel.. He notified Dr. Merriam,the director of the newly formed American School of Classical Studies and excavations began on the site in January, 1888 under the archaeologist Carl. D. Buck. Within weeks the site was securely identified as the center of the ancient deme of Ikarion, for the church walls yielded fragments of statues, inscriptions, and architectural elements from various buildings, all made of the local marble and dating from the classical period (5th & 4th cent. BC) and earlier. Among the most impressive finds are the cult statue of the god Dionysos himself, a superb marble work showing the god larger than life size seated on his throne holding his characteristic Boeotian kantharos
drinking cup, and a marble relief stele of a ‘hoplite
’ warrior which resembles the ‘Marathon Warrior’ stele and was used as the threshold stone for the church doorway. Both these treasures date from the end of the sixth century BC and are now on display in the archaic collection in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. Even more information was provided by the many fourth century BC inscriptions and choregic monuments discovered during two seasons of excavations. Of greatest interest was the large public marble stele (IG ii2 1178) which praised "the mayor (Nikon by name) and crowned him with Ivy (the plant of Dionysos) voted upon by the deme of the Ikarians, because he had fairly and justly carried out the Dionysiac festival" (a yearly drama contest). The stele goes on to praise the sponsors of the winning play as well. Because the sponsors who paid all the costs of producing the ancient plays for the contest were called ‘choregoi’, the monuments with their winning inscriptions are called choregic monuments. The existence of this and other choregic inscription steles verifies the identification of our site as the classical demos of Ikaria, and confirms as well the town’s reputation as host of the yearly "Dionysia" theatrical contests, where plays by the famous fifth century B.C. dramatists Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides were produced again and again alongside newer plays, thus assuring the "classical education" of all those who attended the festivals.
Pieces of sculpture and inscriptions are protected in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. Following the slope of the hill was the seating area where the spectators at the ancient Dionysia sat to watch the plays taking place in the oblong orchestral area below, now defined by four fragments of marble thrones (K) for the priests at the bottom of the slope, and a row of stones (O) which supported the tent (σκηνη) behind which the actors changed, which also stood as the backdrop for the ‘orchestra
’ (dance floor) where all acting took place. This theatrical area is downwards to the right as we enter the site from the modern road. To the left of the orchestra there is a large base (I) made of large and small slabs of marble set in the ground; This may be the base of the altar of the god Dionysos which always stood near or in an ancient theatre. Another possibility is that it was the altar of Apollo
, whose temple (H) stood just to the left and is positively identified by its threshold block, a huge piece of marble inscribed ΙΚΑΡΙΩΝ ΤΟ ΠΥΘΙΟΝ, or ‘The Temple of Apollo of the Ikarians’. Just in front stand many bases for votive offerings (statues and inscriptions dedicated to the god) and inside the one room temple stands the base of the cult statue of Apollo, of which no trace has been found.
On the lower level of the site are the rest of the ancient foundations: to the left are the remains of the sanctuary wall (περιβολος)(E), in the center are two large marble bases (B&C)in front of a rectangular building(D), possibly for the cult statue and altar of Dionysos in front of his temple (no conclusive evidence), while to the right is a fairly well preserved foundation of a semi-circular choregic monument(A) dedicated by three sponsors (Αγνιας, Ξανθιππος, Ξανθιδης) whose play won in the Dionysia sometime in the first half of the fourth century B.C. This monument was used for the apse of the Byzantine chapel which Milchofer found in ruins; a double throne from the theatre had also been brought over to provide seats outside the chapel door and it still stands there.
Considerable damage and weathering has occurred in the more than 100 years since the site was excavated, and a concerted effort by the Greek Archaeological Service is now getting under way to preserve and protect what remains on the site.
Until the 1980s and the 1990s, farmlands covered the northwestern part and the slopes of Dionysos which existed into the 1990s. Most of the population are urban while until the 1960s and the 1970s were rural. The street plan is mainly of mixed triangles and lines that run parallel not as a grid and some others and other varieties. Dionysos is famous for its marble, the White Marble of Dionysos in which marble mining was common near Dionysos.
Attica
Attica is a historical region of Greece, containing Athens, the current capital of Greece. The historical region is centered on the Attic peninsula, which projects into the Aegean Sea...
, Greece
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
— just about 23 km northeast of Athens
Athens
Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...
. The seat of the municipality is the town Agios Stefanos. Dionysos is almost purely residential, but there are a few shops.
Geography
The area sits in the northwestern part of the PenteliPenteli
Pentéli or Pendeli, , and Vrilissos or Vrilittos , Mendeli in medieval times) is a tall mountain and mountain range situated northeast of Athens and southwest of Marathon. Its elevation is 1,109 m...
mountains and its forests that are dominating the south. Another series of mountains and forests lie to the north. Much of the municipality is forested. Dionysos since the mid to late 1980s is connected with the urban sprawl
Urban sprawl
Urban sprawl, also known as suburban sprawl, is a multifaceted concept, which includes the spreading outwards of a city and its suburbs to its outskirts to low-density and auto-dependent development on rural land, high segregation of uses Urban sprawl, also known as suburban sprawl, is a...
of Athens but it is east of the agglomeration of Athens as well as the Megali Daktylo. The residential area covers the western part of the municipality. Dionysos is passed by a road linking to the mountains and to Nea Makri. Dionysos is accessed with an interchange with GR-1
Greek National Road 1
The Greek Motorway 1 is a motorway, partly under construction, and the 2nd longest in Greece. It is the principal north-south road connection in Greece, connecting the country's capital Athens with the regions of Thessaly and Macedonia, as well as the country's second largest city,...
/E75
European route E75
European route E 75 is part of the International E-road network, which is a series of main roads in Europe.The E 75 starts from Vardø, Norway in the Barents Sea and runs south through Finland, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia and Republic of Macedonia to Sitia, Greece on...
(Athens - Lamia - Thessaloniki) at the 19th km 8 km NE and at the 21st km near Varympompi 8 km SE and GR-83
Greek National Road 83
Greek National Road 83 is a national highway of Greece. It connects Gerakas with Marathonas and Aghios Stefanos at the junction with Greek National Road 1....
which is also known as Theseos (Theseus
Theseus
For other uses, see Theseus Theseus was the mythical founder-king of Athens, son of Aethra, and fathered by Aegeus and Poseidon, both of whom Aethra had slept with in one night. Theseus was a founder-hero, like Perseus, Cadmus, or Heracles, all of whom battled and overcame foes that were...
) Avenue to the west. The Athenian plain lies to the west. Dionysos is located SE of Thiva, S of Euboea
Euboea
Euboea is the second largest Greek island in area and population, after Crete. The narrow Euripus Strait separates it from Boeotia in mainland Greece. In general outline it is a long and narrow, seahorse-shaped island; it is about long, and varies in breadth from to...
and Oropos
Oropos
Oropos is a small town and a municipality in East Attica, Greece.-Geography:It is situated on the southern Euboean Gulf, opposite Eretria. Oropos is located N of Avlona and Athens, E of Thebes and SE of Chalcis. Oropos is linked with the road linking Nea Palatia and Sikamino...
, SW of Marathon
Marathon, Greece
Marathon is a town in Greece, the site of the battle of Marathon in 490 BC, in which the heavily outnumbered Athenian army defeated the Persians. The tumulus or burial mound for the 192 Athenian dead that was erected near the battlefield remains a feature of the coastal plain...
, NE of Kifissia
Kifissia
Kifissia or Kifisia is one of the most expensive northern suburbs of Athens, mainly accessed via Kifissias Avenue, running all the way from central Athens up to Theseos Avenue in the suburb of Nea Erythraia. It has traditionally been home to the major Greek political families...
and NE of the Attiki Odos
Attiki Odos
Attiki Odos is a privately owned toll motorway in Greece. The Proastiakos high-speed suburban rail is set almost entirely in the median of the motorway, along its main section. The motorway's numbers are 6 for the main section, 64 for the Hymettus Beltway and 65 for the Aigaleo Beltway...
(number 6).
Even though the town is located only 20 Kilometres away from central Athens, it has a completely different climate, with weather being significantly cooler, including frequent snowfall during the winter.
Municipality
The municipality Dionysos was formed at the 2011 local government reform by the merger of the following 7 former municipalities, that became municipal units:- Agios Stefanos
- Anoixi
- Dionysos
- DrosiaDrosiaDrosia is a rather exclusive suburb in Attica, Greece -- just about 22 km north of Athens. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Dionysos, of which it is a municipal unit....
- KryoneriKryoneri, AtticaKryoneri is a community of the Greek prefecture of Attica. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Dionysos, of which it is a municipal unit.Kryoneri is a rather exclusive suburb of Athens...
- RodopoliRodopoliRodopoli , older name Bala , is an old community in Attica, Greece - about 22 km north of Athens...
- StamataStamataStamata is a community of the Greek prefecture of East Attica. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Dionysos, of which it is a municipal unit....
History
The name of this small town on the north-east slopes of Mount Pendeli dates back to time immemorial, because this was the first demos (town) in ancient Attica (the province of which Athens is the major city) to welcome the young god DionysosDionysus
Dionysus was the god of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, of ritual madness and ecstasy in Greek mythology. His name in Linear B tablets shows he was worshipped from c. 1500—1100 BC by Mycenean Greeks: other traces of Dionysian-type cult have been found in ancient Minoan Crete...
, ancient Greek god of vegetation, wine, and theatre.
The local myth is told by several ancient writers: Athenaios, Hyginos, Apollodoros, and Nonnos. In this green valley thousands of years ago, the local leader Icarius of Athens and his lovely daughter Erigone
Erigone (daughter of Icarius)
In Greek mythology, Erigone was the daughter of Icarius of Athens. Icarius was from Athens. He was cordial towards Dionysus, who gave his shepherds wine. They became intoxicated and killed Icarius, thinking he had poisoned them. His daughter, Erigone, and her dog, Maera, found his body. Erigone...
welcomed a young stranger into their home, offering him fresh goat’s milk as well as food and shelter. Moved by their warm hospitality, the stranger revealed to them that he was actually a god, Dionysos, son of Zeus
Zeus
In the ancient Greek religion, Zeus was the "Father of Gods and men" who ruled the Olympians of Mount Olympus as a father ruled the family. He was the god of sky and thunder in Greek mythology. His Roman counterpart is Jupiter and his Etruscan counterpart is Tinia.Zeus was the child of Cronus...
(king of the gods) and Semele
Semele
Semele , in Greek mythology, daughter of the Boeotian hero Cadmus and Harmonia, was the mortal mother of Dionysus by Zeus in one of his many origin myths. In another version of his mythic origin, he is the son of Persephone...
(a princess of Thebes
Ancient Thebes (Boeotia)
See Thebes, Greece for the modern city built on the ancient ruins.Ancient Thebes was a Boeotian city-state , situated to the north of the Cithaeron range, which divides Boeotia from Attica, and on the southern edge of the Boeotian plain...
). In order to thank them, Dionysos gave Ikarios the first grape vine and taught him the art of wine
Wine
Wine is an alcoholic beverage, made of fermented fruit juice, usually from grapes. The natural chemical balance of grapes lets them ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes, or other nutrients. Grape wine is produced by fermenting crushed grapes using various types of yeast. Yeast...
making.
Delighted with this wonderful drink which brought happiness and drowned sorrows, Ikarios filled several goatskin bags with wine and traveled around the countryside sharing the new drink with the local inhabitants. Unfortunately, some shepherds on Mount Pendeli drank too much of the magic drink, ‘unwatered’, and began to feel dizzy and see double. They suspected that Ikarios had poisoned them, and in their drunken state, they killed him.
When they awoke the next day and found Ikarios dead, they realized their terrible mistake. Fearfully they buried his body under a pine tree and ran away, some say to the island of Kea
Kea (island)
Kea , also known as Gia or Tzia , Zea, and, in Antiquity, Keos , is an island of the Cyclades archipelago, in the Aegean Sea, in Greece. Kea is part of the Kea-Kythnos peripheral unit. Its capital, Ioulis, is inland at a high altitude and is considered quite picturesque...
. The only witness to this crime was Erigone’s little dog, Maera, who ran home howling and pulled Erigone to the spot where her father had been buriedand scratched at the soil. Realizing that her father was dead, Erigone fell into a deep depression and hanged herself from a branch of the pine tree. Before she died, she or the god Dionysos called down a curse on the young women of Attika, that they should suffer the same fate as she had. The people of Athens were horrified when they began to find their daughters hanged from trees here and there and, ignorant of the cause, they appealed to the oracle of the god Apollo at Delphi to explain the deaths. The oracle directed them to find and properly bury the bodies of Ikarios and Erigone, and to track down and punish the murderers. Furthermore, the people were instructed to sacrifice the first grapes harvested every year to the memory of Ikarios and celebrate the ‘Αιωρα’ festival in honour of Erigone, when the young maidens would swing on swings under the trees and sing a song called the ‘αλητη’.
Deme
In Ancient Greece, a deme or demos was a subdivision of Attica, the region of Greece surrounding Athens. Demes as simple subdivisions of land in the countryside seem to have existed in the 6th century BC and earlier, but did not acquire particular significance until the reforms of Cleisthenes in...
called Ikaria or Ikarion, the present day village of Dionysos. The local inhabitants continued to worship Dionysos for centuries in a festival which included drinking and feasting, singing and dancing, and parading round the village with a goat to sacrifice. In the 6th century BC, a local man named Thespis
Thespis
Thespis of Icaria , according to certain Ancient Greek sources and especially Aristotle, was the first person ever to appear on stage as an actor playing a character in a play...
combined many of these elements into a new form of worshipful entertainment which he created, Τραγωοιδια or Tragedy
Tragedy
Tragedy is a form of art based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of...
. Every year in the month Poseidonia
Poseidonia
Poseidonia is a village and a former municipality on the island of Syros, in the Cyclades, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Syros-Ermoupoli, of which it is a municipal unit. The population was 3,006 inhabitants at the 2001 census, and the land area is...
(early winter), the Ikarians would host the drama festival, "Τα Εν Αγροις Διονυσια’ (Rural Dionysia) to honour their favourite god, Dionysos. They even remembered the local heroes of the myth by putting them in the sky as constellations: Ikarios was the star Arcturus in the consellation Bootes, Erigone was Virgo
Virgo (constellation)
Virgo is one of the constellations of the zodiac. Its name is Latin for virgin, and its symbol is . Lying between Leo to the west and Libra to the east, it is the second largest constellation in the sky...
, and Maera was the Lesser Dog Star, Procyon
Procyon
Procyon is the brightest star in the constellation Canis Minor. To the naked eye, it appears to be a single star, the seventh brightest in the night sky with a visual apparent magnitude of 0.34...
.
Aegeus
In Greek mythology, Aegeus , also Aigeus, Aegeas or Aigeas , was an archaic figure in the founding myth of Athens. The "goat-man" who gave his name to the Aegean Sea was, next to Poseidon, the father of Theseus, the founder of Athenian institutions and one of the kings of Athens.-His reign:Upon the...
who also gave his name to the Aegean Sea.
The archaeological site, to the left of Odos Bomou Dionysou heading towards Rapendosa in Dionysos, was the town center (εδρα) of ancient Ikarion and has many interesting features even today. To begin with, this spot was always associated with the name Dionysos and never lost its sacred nature. When worship of the ancient god ceased, a small Byzantine Christian church was built in the sanctuary and, as far as is known, it was dedicated to Saint Dionysios. It was rebuilt in the Middle Ages, but when Greece became a free nation once again (1821), it was already a ruin, destroyed during the Turkish occupation (1456-1821).
In 1886, a German traveler A. Milchhofer passed by and observed many ancient marble blocks built into the walls of the ruined Byzantine chapel.. He notified Dr. Merriam,the director of the newly formed American School of Classical Studies and excavations began on the site in January, 1888 under the archaeologist Carl. D. Buck. Within weeks the site was securely identified as the center of the ancient deme of Ikarion, for the church walls yielded fragments of statues, inscriptions, and architectural elements from various buildings, all made of the local marble and dating from the classical period (5th & 4th cent. BC) and earlier. Among the most impressive finds are the cult statue of the god Dionysos himself, a superb marble work showing the god larger than life size seated on his throne holding his characteristic Boeotian kantharos
Kantharos
A kantharos or cantharus is a type of Greek pottery used for drinking. It is characterized by its high swung handles which extend above the lip of the pot.The god Dionysus had a kantharos which was never empty....
drinking cup, and a marble relief stele of a ‘hoplite
Hoplite
A hoplite was a citizen-soldier of the Ancient Greek city-states. Hoplites were primarily armed as spearmen and fought in a phalanx formation. The word "hoplite" derives from "hoplon" , the type of the shield used by the soldiers, although, as a word, "hopla" could also denote weapons held or even...
’ warrior which resembles the ‘Marathon Warrior’ stele and was used as the threshold stone for the church doorway. Both these treasures date from the end of the sixth century BC and are now on display in the archaic collection in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. Even more information was provided by the many fourth century BC inscriptions and choregic monuments discovered during two seasons of excavations. Of greatest interest was the large public marble stele (IG ii2 1178) which praised "the mayor (Nikon by name) and crowned him with Ivy (the plant of Dionysos) voted upon by the deme of the Ikarians, because he had fairly and justly carried out the Dionysiac festival" (a yearly drama contest). The stele goes on to praise the sponsors of the winning play as well. Because the sponsors who paid all the costs of producing the ancient plays for the contest were called ‘choregoi’, the monuments with their winning inscriptions are called choregic monuments. The existence of this and other choregic inscription steles verifies the identification of our site as the classical demos of Ikaria, and confirms as well the town’s reputation as host of the yearly "Dionysia" theatrical contests, where plays by the famous fifth century B.C. dramatists Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides were produced again and again alongside newer plays, thus assuring the "classical education" of all those who attended the festivals.
Orchestra
An orchestra is a sizable instrumental ensemble that contains sections of string, brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments. The term orchestra derives from the Greek ορχήστρα, the name for the area in front of an ancient Greek stage reserved for the Greek chorus...
’ (dance floor) where all acting took place. This theatrical area is downwards to the right as we enter the site from the modern road. To the left of the orchestra there is a large base (I) made of large and small slabs of marble set in the ground; This may be the base of the altar of the god Dionysos which always stood near or in an ancient theatre. Another possibility is that it was the altar of Apollo
Apollo
Apollo is one of the most important and complex of the Olympian deities in Greek and Roman mythology...
, whose temple (H) stood just to the left and is positively identified by its threshold block, a huge piece of marble inscribed ΙΚΑΡΙΩΝ ΤΟ ΠΥΘΙΟΝ, or ‘The Temple of Apollo of the Ikarians’. Just in front stand many bases for votive offerings (statues and inscriptions dedicated to the god) and inside the one room temple stands the base of the cult statue of Apollo, of which no trace has been found.
On the lower level of the site are the rest of the ancient foundations: to the left are the remains of the sanctuary wall (περιβολος)(E), in the center are two large marble bases (B&C)in front of a rectangular building(D), possibly for the cult statue and altar of Dionysos in front of his temple (no conclusive evidence), while to the right is a fairly well preserved foundation of a semi-circular choregic monument(A) dedicated by three sponsors (Αγνιας, Ξανθιππος, Ξανθιδης) whose play won in the Dionysia sometime in the first half of the fourth century B.C. This monument was used for the apse of the Byzantine chapel which Milchofer found in ruins; a double throne from the theatre had also been brought over to provide seats outside the chapel door and it still stands there.
Until the 1980s and the 1990s, farmlands covered the northwestern part and the slopes of Dionysos which existed into the 1990s. Most of the population are urban while until the 1960s and the 1970s were rural. The street plan is mainly of mixed triangles and lines that run parallel not as a grid and some others and other varieties. Dionysos is famous for its marble, the White Marble of Dionysos in which marble mining was common near Dionysos.
Τhe Dionysia festival
Dionysos hosts an annual open summer festival usually every July, featuring art exhibitions, theatrical performances, musical shows, sculpture painting and other arts.Library
The public library of Dionysos is located in the town hall, includes over 3500 books available to registered residents to borrow for free. It is run by local volunteers.Public transport
Dionysos is connected to Kifisia by the 536 Dionysos-Kifisia bus service. The service runs approximately every 40 minutes, last one around midnight.Other
Dionysos has 2 preschools/kndergartens, 2 elementary schools, 1 junior highschool/highschool, 3 churches and a few kiosks, taverns and gas stations.External links
- Municipality of Dionysos
- White Marble of Dionissos-Penteli - greekmarble.com
- Dionyssomarble group (Dionyssos - Pentelikon marble quarries)
- Dionissos White
| North: Drosia Drosia Drosia is a rather exclusive suburb in Attica, Greece -- just about 22 km north of Athens. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Dionysos, of which it is a municipal unit.... and Rodopoli Rodopoli Rodopoli , older name Bala , is an old community in Attica, Greece - about 22 km north of Athens... |
||
| West: Ekali Ekali Ekali is an exclusive suburban community of Athens -- just about 20 km to the north of the city. Ekali sits between the Athenian plain and the Penteli mountains. The plain is to the west; the forests at the foot of the Penteli mountain range lie to the east... and Nea Erythraia Nea Erythraia Nea Erythraia , is a suburb in the northeastern part of Athens, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Kifisia, of which it is a municipal unit.... |
Dionysos | East: Nea Makri Nea Makri Nea Makri is a town located in the northeastern part of Attica, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Marathon, of which it is a municipal unit.- Town layout :... |
| Southwest: Kifissia Kifissia Kifissia or Kifisia is one of the most expensive northern suburbs of Athens, mainly accessed via Kifissias Avenue, running all the way from central Athens up to Theseos Avenue in the suburb of Nea Erythraia. It has traditionally been home to the major Greek political families... |
South: Nea Penteli Nea Penteli Nea Penteli is a suburb in the northeastern part of Athens, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Penteli, of which it is a municipal unit.... and Penteli Penteli Pentéli or Pendeli, , and Vrilissos or Vrilittos , Mendeli in medieval times) is a tall mountain and mountain range situated northeast of Athens and southwest of Marathon. Its elevation is 1,109 m... |