The Sanctuary of Eleusis lies about twenty kilometres northwest of Athens, in Attica, at the end of the ancient Sacred Way. For roughly two thousand years it was one of the most important religious centres in the Greek world, and what happened inside it was never written down.

The sanctuary belonged to Demeter and her daughter Persephone. The myth is the reason it is here: Hades took Persephone into the underworld, Demeter searched for her nine days and nights without eating or drinking, and she rested at Eleusis. While she mourned, nothing grew. Zeus finally forced a settlement — Persephone spends part of the year below and part above, and the seasons follow her.

The Mysteries

Every year, in the month that fell between late August and September, the Eleusinian Mysteries were celebrated over nine days.

They began in Athens, at the sanctuary of Demeter below the Acropolis. On the second day the candidates went down to the sea at Phaleron to purify themselves. Then a procession walked the Sacred Way from Athens to Eleusis, carrying the sacred objects, led by a priestess. Herodotus put the number of people on that road at thirty thousand.

At Eleusis the initiates fasted through the day and drank the kykeon, a mixture of water, barley and herbs. At nightfall they went into the Telesterion, a great square hall filled with columns, and there the initiation took place: things were shown, things were said, and the ceremony ended with the revealing of the sacred objects.

Every initiate swore never to speak of it. In two thousand years, nobody did.

Modern scholars are divided. Some think the priests staged a vision of the afterlife using darkness, torchlight and sacred objects. Others think the kykeon contained something that altered the mind. Both remain guesses.

Initiation was unusually open for the ancient world: it was not restricted to citizens, and women and slaves could take part.

The end

The sanctuary was still working in the fourth century AD, when the Roman emperors closed the pagan cults. Alaric's Goths destroyed it in 396.

What to see today

The site is large and much of it is at foundation level, so it rewards patience.

The entrance leads into a Roman courtyard with a small temple and the remains of two triumphal arches, and then to the Greater Propylaia, a Roman gateway built as a copy of the entrance to the Athenian Acropolis.

Beyond it, the Lesser Propylaia is the more interesting of the two. Its roof was carried by two Caryatids, and one of them is in the museum here.

The Ploutonion is a cave in the rock, sacred to Hades, and understood in antiquity as the entrance to the underworld through which Persephone returned.

The Telesterion itself is a great square platform cut into the hillside, with rows of steps around the sides where the initiates sat.

Near the entrance is the Kallichoron Well, where Demeter is said to have rested.

The museum

The museum stands inside the site, in a building of 1890, and it was completely redisplayed in 2023.

Its best-known piece is the Caryatid from the Lesser Propylaia, a large statue of a girl carrying a basket on her head, with the carving of her face and jewellery unusually well preserved. There is also a seventh-century BC amphora showing Odysseus blinding the Cyclops, and the sculpture known as the Fleeing Kore.

The displays include digital reconstructions of the buildings, which make the site outside far easier to understand.