1 Arch of Hadrian Gateway to the new Athens
adrian, Roman emperor from AD 117 to 138, was a great philhellene and would-be Greek philosopher. In the 120s and early 130s AD he oversaw an extensive (and expensive) building programme in Athens. One striking element of this project was the Temple of Olympian Zeus – the largest in Greece, begun in the sixth century BC but only completed under Hadrian in AD 131. Alongside that temple is a more modest but telling monument: the Arch of
