Acropolis Museum tickets, hours and tours

The Acropolis Museum holds the finds from the Acropolis of Athens and its slopes, from Archaic statues to the sculptures of the Parthenon. It stands about 300 meters southeast of the Parthenon, at the start of the Dionysiou Areopagitou pedestrian walkway, and its glass floors look down on the ruins of an ancient Athenian neighborhood (Acropolis Museum). Below you'll find all our Acropolis Museum tickets and tours, from the admission ticket with audio guides to guided tours that combine the museum with the Acropolis. Our own booking data, further down, shows how travelers plan it: they typically book the museum ticket 5 days ahead, and 97% of guests on our Early Morning Walking Tour add both entrance tickets.

Why book your Acropolis Museum ticket or tour with Keytours

The museum makes the most sense next to the monuments its sculptures come from. "The museum visit helped us understand everything we saw on the hill," Alex wrote after our Early Morning Walking Tour in October 2025. We've been organizing tours in Athens since 1963 (about Keytours), and most of our museum options pair the two.

• Museum tickets for your date, with an optional audio tour of the Plaka old town or two audio tours in the same booking.
• Licensed guides on every guided tour, with headsets.
• The Acropolis and the museum in one morning on our Early Morning Walking Tour, with both entrance tickets available as an option.
• Private and full-day options, including hotel pickup on the private half day and Cape Sounion on the full day.
• Free cancellation up to 24 hours before on our group tours, or 48 hours on the private half day.

What our museum booking data shows

We've been guiding travelers around Athens since 1963, and every season thousands of them visit the Acropolis and its museum with us. That gives us a lot of first-hand information about how people like you plan this visit. What follows comes straight from our own booking system, not from surveys or estimates: our museum ticket and our English-language museum tours, for visits between June 1 and September 24, 2026, with canceled bookings left out. The data is grouped by product and departure time and contains no personal information. It shows how our customers book, not how crowded the museum is.

• Guided visitors add both tickets. On the Early Morning Walking Tour, 97% of bookings included the Acropolis and museum entrance tickets.
• For a small group, take the 8:15 a.m. Early Morning departure. According to the tour's booking notes, it enters the Acropolis with the 8:00 a.m. opening slot. This summer its typical group was 4 people, against 7 at 10:00 a.m., 11 at 9:00 a.m. and 11.5 at 8:00 a.m. Across all departures, the typical Early Morning group was 8 people and the largest was 34.
• Book the private half day about three months out. It was typically booked 93 days ahead, and 79% of bookings came in more than 30 days before the tour.
• Thursday and Tuesday were slightly more popular, and Sunday the least chosen. Share of our museum tickets by day of visit:

• The Plaka audio tour is the popular add-on. 79% of museum ticket customers chose the version with the Plaka old town audio tour.
• Museum tickets are booked close to the date. They were typically booked 5 days ahead, and 38% were booked within 48 hours of the visit.

Reviews back this up. Our Early Morning Walking Tour, which pairs the Acropolis with the museum, has 1,005 reviews on our site with an average of 4.95 out of 5, and 61% of them mention the guide. Of the reviews that mention the museum, 71% also mention the guide. "The museum visit connected everything beautifully," Max wrote in October 2025.

Our take: on a first visit, pick the Early Morning Walking Tour over the museum ticket on its own. It costs you an early start and four hours on your feet, but the guide ties the galleries to the monuments you've just seen. The ticket with audio holds up well on its own, though: of the 508 reviews of our museum ticket, 60 mention the audio guide, and 93% of those gave five stars. It suits a second visit, a rainy afternoon or a Friday evening, when the museum stays open until 10 p.m.

How far ahead our customers typically booked each museum option:

"Typically booked" is the median number of days between booking and visit; "few bookings" means fewer than 25 in the period, so treat it as a rough guide.

Which Acropolis Museum ticket or tour is right for you?

• On your own, at your own pace: the Acropolis Museum Tickets with Optional Audio Guides.
• First visit, with the Acropolis too: the Early Morning Walking Tour: Acropolis & Acropolis Museum, four hours with a licensed guide.
• A smaller group: the Semi-Private Acropolis & Acropolis Museum Walking Tour, with up to 12 people.
• By bus, with both tickets included: the Acropolis and Acropolis Museum Guided Tour - Athens City Tour.
• Your own guide and hotel pickup: the Athens Private Tour: Parthenon & Acropolis Museum Half Day City Tour.
• A full day, with the sea: Athens One Day: Parthenon, Acropolis Museum & Cape Sounion Including Lunch.
• Arriving by cruise ship: the Excursion to Athens from a Cruise Ship: Parthenon & Acropolis Museum, with port pickup.

Acropolis Museum tickets and tours compared

Lengths, ticket terms and cancellation rules come from each tour page. Prices and departure times change by date, so check them in the booking panel. For the Acropolis itself, see our guide to Acropolis tours in Athens.

How Acropolis Museum tickets work

The museum's general admission ticket costs €20 and the reduced ticket €10. General tickets are sold at the museum's ticket desk and through its e-ticketing service, while reduced and free tickets are issued only at the desk, on presentation of the required documents. The museum publishes who qualifies for reduced or free entry on its official visitor page. A ticket covers all exhibition areas and the archaeological excavation beneath the museum. You don't need one for the shop and café on the ground floor. The second-floor restaurant needs a free ticket from the desk.

Our museum ticket is booked for your date, and you can add audio tours in the same booking. Our child price applies up to age 18. On our guided tours, adding the museum ticket means it's booked for the day of your tour, so there's nothing to arrange before you arrive.

Inside the Acropolis Museum

The galleries follow the rock itself: you start with finds from the slopes, climb to the Archaic Acropolis and finish with the Parthenon at the top (Acropolis Museum).

Ground floor: the Gallery of the Acropolis Slopes

The first gallery holds finds from the slopes, where there were sanctuaries, theaters and, further down, private houses. Its floor slopes upward like the path an ancient visitor would have climbed to the Acropolis, and glass panels let you look down into the excavation below (Acropolis Museum).

First floor: the Archaic Acropolis

The east and south sides of the first floor cover the Acropolis of the Archaic period, 700 to 480 BC, before the Parthenon was built. Natural light from large windows and skylights recreates the open air of the ancient sanctuary. Look for the Calf-bearer (around 570 BC), the Rampin Rider (around 550 BC), the Peplos Kore (around 530 BC) and the Kritios Boy (after 480 BC) (Acropolis Museum). Photography isn't allowed in this gallery.

First floor, west: Propylaia, Athena Nike and the Erechtheion

The west side shows sculptures and architectural pieces from the other monuments of Perikles' building program: the Propylaia, the Temple of Athena Nike and the Erechtheion (Acropolis Museum). A Caryatid from the Erechtheion porch is on display here (Acropolis Museum).

Third floor: the Parthenon Gallery

The top floor is given over entirely to the Parthenon's sculptures. The glass-walled gallery wraps around a core with the same orientation and dimensions as the temple's cella. The frieze blocks are mounted in the same position they held on the temple, but lower down, the metopes hang in pairs between steel columns that match the Parthenon's columns in number, and the pediment figures stand on low pedestals at each end. Original marbles are shown alongside plaster copies of the pieces held in the British Museum and other museums abroad, with the Parthenon in view through the glass (Acropolis Museum). For the temple's story, see our guide to Parthenon tickets and tours.

Below the museum: the excavation

The ruins under the museum are an ancient neighborhood where people lived from the 4th millennium BC to the 12th century AD: streets, houses with courtyards and wells, mansions with private baths, and workshops. The excavation opened to the public in June 2019, and a small Museum of the Excavation was added at its southern edge in June 2024. The neighborhood was destroyed by the Roman general Sulla's troops in 86 BC and again by the Herulians in AD 267 (Acropolis Museum).

Planning your visit

Acropolis Museum hours for 2026

Official hours from the museum's visitor page, checked on September 25, 2026. Last entry is 30 minutes before closing, and staff start clearing the galleries 15 minutes before closing.

The museum is closed on January 1, Orthodox Easter Sunday, May 1, and December 25 and 26. It closes at 3 p.m. on December 24 and 31. On Orthodox Good Friday it opens from noon to 6 p.m., and on Holy Saturday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Admission is free for everyone on March 6, March 25, May 18 and October 28.

Acropolis first or museum first?

If you have one day, see the Acropolis before the museum, to avoid the crowds and the heat on the hill. Our own museum ticket page warns that the museum tends to get crowded between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. A morning on the hill puts you at the museum in that window, which is why our Early Morning Walking Tour starts early; on your own, the afternoon is the quieter option we suggest. With more days, a Friday evening at the museum, open until 10 p.m., is an easy way to fit it in.

Bags, photos and families

• Bags: visitors go through an X-ray scanner at the entrance, and large bags and backpacks go in the cloakroom, so travel light.
• Photos: allowed everywhere except the Archaic Acropolis Gallery. Flash and tripods aren't allowed.
• Food: no food or drinks in the galleries.
• Families: strollers can be borrowed at the ground-floor cloakroom, and there's a parents' room on the first floor.
• Accessibility: elevators are available, with priority for visitors with mobility difficulties.

When things don't go to plan

• Rain. The museum is where Athens goes when it rains. "I was very grateful to skip the line on a rainy day when everyone was seeking shelter indoors," Matthew wrote in a review on our site in October 2025.
• Exploring alone. In the same review, Matthew admitted: "I was jealous of people with tour guides. This isn't an easy museum to explore self-guided." If you want the galleries explained, choose a guided tour.