The Sacred Olive Tree of the AcropolisContinuously renewed

The olive tree beside the Erechtheion has died and returned at least twice, and both times the same legend gets the credit. Herodotus wrote that when Xerxes' Persian army burned the Acropolis in 480 BC, the sacred olive Athena was said to have grown in her contest with Poseidon went up with it, only to sprout a new shoot a cubit high the very next day. The tree standing here now is a second resurrection: German occupying forces damaged the earlier specimen during the Second World War, and sources disagree on exactly when its replacement went in, some say 1917, before that war even started, others say 1952, after it. What both agree on is the point of the story rather than the paperwork: someone has kept an olive growing on this exact spot for as long as Athens has kept records, using cuttings from the previous tree rather than starting over with something unrelated. The Erechtheion behind it, an asymmetrical marble temple finished around 406 BC to house the Acropolis's holiest relics, has needed far more restoration than the tree ever has. Entry is included in the standard Acropolis ticket, and the olive stands walled into the Pandroseion, the small sanctuary against the temple's west side.