Hadrianic Bridge

Above the Kiphisos river at Eleusis, a ruined medieval tower squats on the crown of a Roman bridge, one of the surviving stretches of the Sacred Way that linked ancient Athens to the sanctuary of Demeter. The bridge itself is credited to the emperor Hadrian, who was initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries in 125 A.D. The tower, listed as No.26 in Langdon's catalogue of Attica's mortared towers, is usually called Frankish, though the mortar in its walls only guarantees a medieval date, and it might well be Byzantine work from before the thirteenth century. What remains is merely the base, rising to 72cm, its rectangular plan measuring 5.34 by 7.67 metres. The builders scavenged stone from the bridge and possibly from the great temple of Demeter itself; later centuries have in turn quarried the tower for building material, leaving little more than this low platform of reused antiquity.