On a budget, Ancient Agora still earns its price.
€10 (summer) / €5 winter; included in €30 combo ticket
Walking the same ground where Socrates argued and democracy was invented, through a green archaeological park with the gorgeously intact Temple of Hephaestus, is far more atmospheric and less mobbed than the Acropolis above it. The catch: much of it is scattered foundations that require imagination, and the reconstructed Stoa of Attalos museum is small.