Athens Eleusis

Take bus A16 or B16 from Pl. Eleftherias in Athens (also called “Pl. Koumoundourou”); purchase tickets at adjacent kiosks. Buses take 45min.-1hr. and leave every 20min. }43 470. €3, students and seniors €2, EU students free. Open Tu-Su 8:30am-3pm. To find the ruins from the bus stop in Elefsina, follow signs, look for Odos and Dimitros streets, or walk toward the Greek flag on top of the Eleusinian acropolis.

Though the gritty industrial town Elefsina doesn’t seem to have much in the way of secrets, revealing the details of the cult worship that took place here used to be punishable by death. When Hades abducted her daughter Persephone, harvest goddess Demeter was traumatized enough to begin inflicting the ravages of the four seasons on the earth. Here, myth holds, she found solace in the kindness of Eleusinians. In honor of the saga, countless ancients took part in a secretive nine-day ritual here each year, from Mycenaean times to AD 400. Initiates were rumored to have seen the darkest truths of life and death, and modern historians have speculated that gory sacrifices and powerful hallucinogens were involved in the rites. Ever since Roman Emperor Theodosius put an end to the pagan celebration, though, the precise components of the Eleusinian rites have remained unknown—just as Demeter’s priests would have wanted it.

Today, fallen columns and crumbled arches mark the hill where the rituals took place. Brochures available at the ticket office provide a detailed blueprint of the original layout, and the museum houses two miniature plaster models. Despite the curators’ best intentions, however, the ancient structures are unrecognizable. Years of erosion and attack have reduced the once-monumental acropolis to a sprawl of expansive, indistinguishable ruins; the intriguing history surrounding them can be appreciated without actually visiting the site itself.