📍Plato's Academy Park, Akadimia Platonos, 104 42 Athens, Greece
387 BC – 347 BC“I was born into an aristocratic family in Athens and grew up expecting a life in politics. Then I met Socrates, and spent my youth following him through the marketplace, watching him question generals, poets and craftsmen until they admitted how little they knew. When Athens put him to death I lost my faith in politics and travelled — to Egypt, to Italy, to Sicily. Around 387 BC I came home and began teaching at the Akademeia, a place just outside the city walls to the north-west, near the river Kephissos: an old sacred grove of olive trees, said to be named after the hero Akademos, with a shrine to Athena and a public gymnasium where young men exercised. There, walking under the olives and in a small garden I bought nearby, my students and I argued about justice, beauty, the soul and the ideal state. Students came from all over the Greek world; Aristotle studied with me for twenty years. I taught and wrote there for the rest of my life. That is why we still speak of the groves of Academe, and why every academy takes its name from mine.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today