Greece to tackle tourists’ long queues outside Acropolis

Hundreds of tourists are standing forming queues of more than 150 meters in order to visit the Acropolis of Athens. The phenomenon is not new in July since the crowds of people and the long waiting hours were reported since May.It is still surprising, though, that no solution has been found until the peak of the season.

Greece’s Culture Minister Lina Mendoni announced on Thursday that some provisional solutions are underway.

The Minister estimated that visitors to the Acropolis have increased by 80% for the month of June and early July compared to the corresponding period in 2019.

Speaking to Skai FM, the Culture Minister announced a system with visitor zones  which will be implemented in July to address the problem of long queues.

She stressed that they already made changes such a separate entrance for visitors from cruise-ships since last Saturday, July 1, and the next measure will deal with other group visits.

Regarding electronic tickets and the time of visit she claimed it is not easy to set such a limit [A thing Spain managed in Alhambra 30 years ago…]

She stressed that cruise ship passengers visit the Acropolis from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. and that afterward the situation is totally different.

• But who would visit the Acropolis early afternoon in the hottest month of the year?

She also noted that if the entrance routes to the Acropolis had not been built, it would have been almost impossible to visit it.

Mendoni noted that even with the provisional measures, “we will not have reached the final solution if the “bottleneck” phenomenon, as she called it, is not addressed, a phenomenon that is constantly observed in the Propylaia.

“We cannot tear down the Propylaia. However, we can expand them, so that we go to the ancient model. In ancient times there were more than two entrances. We have all the data and a relevant study is ongoing,” the minister who will write history in the destruction of Acropolis claimed.

Read also KTG’s end May 2023: Tourists besiege the Acropolis, calls for urgent measures to protect also the monument.

She said further that  the Acropolis “is one of the largest and most popular monuments in the world. The same applies to other countries that also have popular monuments and museums. During peak periods there are queues and delays at the entrance. This is a reality.”

KTG POLL