The Temple of Asklepios sits on the southern slopes of the Acropolis, founded in the 420s BCE when typhoid wiped out a third of Athens' population. A sacred snake, sent from the god's main sanctuary at Epidaurus, chose the site by crawling to a freshwater spring. What followed was less temple, more ancient hospital.

Patients paid a healing fee, sacrificed an animal, then slept on its skin in the incubation area overnight. Whatever they dreamed, the priest-doctors interpreted the next morning as divine prescription: perhaps a diet, massage, exercise regimen, medicine or even surgery. Successful cures prompted grateful patients to dedicate inscriptions or clay replicas of their healed body parts, a few of which survive in the Acropolis Museum.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours trace how Athens turned to Asklepios during the Peloponnesian War's darkest chapter, explaining the rituals that made this quiet sanctuary function as both spiritual refuge and practical clinic.