Acropolis Museum Tickets

Which Acropolis Museum tickets are worth the money?

Acropolis Museum tickets are a €15 question. The plain timed ticket costs about €26 and the 75-minute guided tour with entry starts at about €35. Everything else, the passes and the combinations, is a variation on those three. So the real decision is not which of nine products to buy. It is whether you want a booked slot, and whether you want someone standing next to you when you reach the top floor.

Take the guide if this is your first visit. The whole building is arranged around one room: the Parthenon Gallery, a glass hall on the top floor built to the exact orientation and dimensions of the temple you can see through the window. The frieze runs round it at eye level, 160 metres of horsemen, musicians, sacrificial cattle and gods, in the order the sculptors intended. On your own it is a very long band of marble. With a guide it becomes a procession you can follow from the first rider at the south-west corner to the gods seated over the east door, and the white plaster gaps where the London and Paris pieces belong start to say something about why Greece wants them back. The Headout tour does this in 75 minutes, in English or Spanish, and 3,300 reviewers have rated it 4.6. For about €9 more than the plain ticket, that is the best value on this page.

Take the plain ticket if you know the collection, have small children, or simply prefer to drift. Headout sells it for about €25.90 and GetYourGuide for about €26, both with an optional audio guide on your phone. What you are paying for is a booked slot and the e-ticket entrance, which is the quicker way in. Headout suggests two to three hours. The museum itself gives no figure. Two hours, including the excavation, is a fair plan.

Reduced and free categories are checked on arrival. EU citizens up to 25 and non-EU children up to 5 are among them, so a family should count who pays before choosing a ticket.

Booking, cancellation and the timed slot

Book the museum once your Athens dates are set. The guided tour and both plain tickets are sold for a fixed date and time slot, and that slot is what you are paying for: you walk in at the hour you picked instead of taking whatever the day gives you. If your dates could still move, the Acropolis and museum combination cancels free up to 24 hours before the start, and the city passes cancel free as well.

Slots are worth thinking about. Friday evenings and the first hour after opening are the quietest, and both fill first in the summer. A guided tour is the one to book earliest, because a small group of that size has a fixed number of places and the English-language departures go before the rest.

How to book, in four steps

1. Pick guided or plain. First visit, or any interest in the Parthenon sculptures: the 75-minute guided tour from about €35. Repeat visit, small children or a tight budget: the timed-entry ticket from about €26, which still books you a slot and takes you in through the e-ticket entrance.
2. Pick the slot. Friday evening in any season, otherwise the first hour after opening. Avoid Monday afternoons and the late-morning summer wave.
3. Book when the dates are fixed. The museum-only Acropolis Museum tickets from both partners cannot be cancelled or rescheduled. If you want a way out, the Acropolis and museum combination at about €94.50 can be cancelled up to 24 hours before the start.
4. Pair it with the rock. Climb the Acropolis first, early, and come down to the museum with your slot timed for late morning, or take the combination tour that covers both with one guide and whisper headsets.

Opening hours and getting there

The museum opens every day of the week, but Monday is the short one, and last entry is always 30 minutes before closing. The excavation under the building keeps the same hours.

Getting there is the easy part. The address is Dionysiou Areopagitou 15, on the marble-paved pedestrian street that runs along the south foot of the rock. Akropoli station on metro Line 2 puts you almost at the door, the Makrigianni bus and trolley stop is beside it, and from Syntagma Square it is about 15 minutes on foot down Amalias Avenue. The south-slope entrance to the Acropolis itself is across the road, which is why most people do the two on the same day.

What to see: highlights

• Parthenon Gallery, third floor. The reason the building exists. The frieze runs in its original position, the metopes sit between steel columns spaced like the temple's, and the pediment figures stand at the east and west ends, with plaster casts filling the places of the marbles held abroad. Turn round and the Parthenon itself is in the window.
• The Erechtheion Caryatids, first floor west. The maidens who held up the porch across the road, shown at eye level with sculpture from the Propylaia and the Temple of Athena Nike, including the Nike untying her sandal.
• Archaic Acropolis Gallery, first floor. The Acropolis before the Persians burned it: the Peplos Kore of about 530 BC with her traces of paint, the Rampin Rider, the Kritios Boy who is the first figure in Greek art to shift his weight onto one leg, and the Hekatompedon pediments. This is the one gallery where cameras stay in the bag.
• Head of Alexander the Great, first floor north. Among the Roman-era portraits, next to a head of Artemis Brauronia.
• Gallery of the Acropolis Slopes, ground floor. The first room. The floor tilts upward like the ancient path up the hill, and glass panels in it look straight down onto the dig.
• The excavation. An ancient Athenian neighbourhood under the building: streets, courtyard houses, wells and mansions with private baths, open since 2019, plus the small Museum of the Excavation added in 2024. Every ticket includes it, and most visitors miss it because the lift goes straight up.

Best time to visit

Friday evening, in any season. The 10 pm closing applies all year, the galleries empty out after 7, and the Parthenon Gallery looks straight across at the floodlit temple. The second-floor restaurant stays open until midnight on Friday and Saturday, so you can walk the frieze at 8, eat on the terrace at 9 and still be back in Plaka before the bars fill. Nothing else on this page improves the visit as much as choosing that slot.

If Friday does not work, take the first hour after opening or the last two before closing. In summer the middle of the day is usually the worst: the groups that climbed the Acropolis at 8 come down at 11 and walk straight across the road, and the building fills with them until mid-afternoon. A booked slot does not empty the galleries, but it does put you inside at the hour you chose. And watch Monday: the museum closes at 5, so Acropolis Museum tickets for a 4 pm slot leave you an hour and no time for the basement. The free days are as crowded as free days always are. If your dates are flexible, go the day before or after.

Tips before you go

Travel light: large bags, purses and backpacks go through an X-ray at the entrance and then into the ground-floor cloakroom, where strollers are also on loan. Wheelchairs come from the Visitor Services desk, ramps serve every entrance, and lifts and accessible toilets are on every floor. Photography without flash or tripod is fine everywhere except the Archaic Acropolis Gallery. If you booked the guided tour, the meeting point is 3 Dionysiou Areopagitou, under the orange "Athens Walking Tours" sign, 15 minutes before the start. With a plain e-ticket, look for the museum's separate e-ticket entrance rather than joining the first queue you see.

Do not take the lift on arrival. Walk up the tilted floor of the first gallery, look down through the glass at the excavation, and save the Parthenon Gallery for last, because it lands harder after an hour with the older sculpture below it. Afterwards, the ground-floor cafe needs no ticket, and the desk issues a free admission ticket for the shop and the second-floor restaurant, so a drink on the terrace facing the Parthenon costs nothing in entry.

Nearby and combinations

The natural pairing is the Acropolis itself, and our Acropolis tickets page covers the same-day plan in detail. If you want one booking for both, the Headout combination at about €94.50 covers timed Acropolis entry, the museum and a live guide over three and a half to four hours, and, unlike the museum-only tickets, it can be cancelled. A self-guided version of the same pair with audio guides sells for about €74.54, which is close to the two single tickets bought separately, so the saving there is convenience rather than money.

If the museum is one of four or more stops in two or three days, look at the Athens City Pass. The GetYourGuide city pass at about €79 and the Headout MegaPass from about €99 both include Acropolis Museum tickets with an audio guide, timed Acropolis entry and the hop-on hop-off bus. They only beat single tickets if you actually use the bus and the Acropolis as well. For Acropolis Museum tickets plus the rock alone, the guided or audio combination is the tighter buy.

For the rest of the city, our Best museums in Athens guide sets out how the other collections compare and which ones pair well in a day. Walking east from the museum along the same pedestrian street, the Temple of Olympian Zeus is a short stroll for the same afternoon. The Ancient Agora, round the western end of the rock through the old town, makes a full second day of antiquities.