After the New Acropolis Museum opened in June 2009, the problems of not being able to take photographs within the museum were compounded by the lack of a good guide to the museum's collection. In the last couple of years this situation has been somewhat remedied with the publication of V.’s guide and a range of others including Servi's The Acropolis Museum, and publications by the Association of Friends of the Acropolis in addition to some well-illustrated children's books.

V. has made the stunning material in the Acropolis museum accessible to a wide audience, and Doumas, as an experienced translator, has done justice to the text. The introduction outlines the development of the museum, including some interesting points regarding the foundation of the building and the impact on the immediate environment. Here, the discussion of the visual and physical relationship between the Acropolis and museum is well synthesised.

The presentation of the museum begins with the domestic and mortuary material from the houses and graves situated on the slopes, providing a different view of the Acropolis from the more obvious public and religious functions. Additionally, archaeology from the smaller sanctuaries such as that of Dionysus and the Asclepeion is well presented. As one would expect, the majority of the discussion focuses on the buildings of the Periclean programme, which are given full treatment in terms of illustrations, with reconstruction drawings and photographs of the monuments, as well as the associated sculptures. The Parthenon sculptures are described in detail and there is some useful situation of the data in terms of Greek sculpture more generally.

The text boxes are helpful additions to the book and they usefully include some focused detail on subjects such as Pericles (p. 64) and the building inscriptions of the Erechtheum (p. 83 & fig. 129) and a section of Plutarch's description of the building works (p. 98). The images of some of the exhibition spaces within the galleries are effective in giving the reader an appreciation of the layout; particularly for the second floor, the archaic gallery (fig. 83), which allows a sense of the rather crowded and busy space that would have been the Archaic acropolis. Photographs of the individual pieces in the museum are excellent with good detailed descriptions (figs 86–7). Reconstruction drawings help to visualise the context, not just in terms of the Acropolis (fig. 128) but for Athens too.

The purpose of the book is to present the function and use of the Acropolis through the material in the museum, and in this respect the aim is successfully achieved. The images and interpretation of elements such as the ionic frieze (p. 142–5), the discussion of colour (p. 145) and the short conclusions make this a more challenging approach to the Acropolis material than the average tourist guide. Elements of the presentation, such as the lack of in-text references and occasional flattening of the diachronic periods, make it less of an academic work. While the writing style and breadth of the material makes this volume accessible to tourists, the presentation of the images and the contextualisation makes this book also worth recommending to students of archaeology, classical and museum studies.