The market

Many parts of modern Athens were unrecognisable during the years of Otto. The tranquillity of the Roman Agora would seem utterly foreign to the Athenians of the 19th century. According to a French visitor in the late 1850s, early in the morning, you could see merchants from all over Attica sitting in “wagons of Homeric origin” between the Gate of Athena Archegetis and the Tower of the Winds, advertising their merchandise (that included anything from figs from Asia Minor to perfumes from Paris) in the shade of half-torn canvases.