Where was the Areopagus?

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The Areopagus, “hill of Ares”, is the bare rocky outcrop in Athens just north-west of the Acropolis, between it and the ancient Agora; the map point stands on it. The name belonged both to the hill and to the council that once met there, the oldest court of Athens, and that double meaning is behind the question of where exactly Paul spoke. Luke says that the philosophers of the Agora “took him, and brought him unto Areopagus”, and that “Paul stood in the midst of Mars' hill” and began: “Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious.” He had seen “an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD”; Pausanias, a century later, saw altars of unknown gods at Phalerum near Athens, and Philostratus says such altars stood in Athens itself. One of the hearers who believed was “Dionysius the Areopagite”, a member of the council. In Roman times the council of the Areopagus still oversaw religion and the schools, and some scholars read the scene as a hearing before it; by then it may have met in the Royal Stoa in the Agora rather than on the rock, so Paul's audience may have stood below the hill. Others take Luke's words at face value and put the speech on the rock itself, where a bronze plaque with its text is now fixed. Either way the place is within a few hundred metres, in the heart of classical Athens, in about AD 50.