The school where students learned while walking

In 335 BC, Aristotle returned to Athens after years of travel and teaching, and founded a school at the Lyceum, a grove sacred to Apollo just outside the city walls.

He was said to teach while walking with his students along a covered colonnade called the peripatos. That is why his followers became known as the Peripatetics, “those who walk about”.

The school was a research centre as much as a classroom. Aristotle and his students collected the constitutions of 158 Greek cities, catalogued plants and animals, and studied everything from logic and ethics to biology, physics, rhetoric and poetry. Many of his surviving books are probably his lecture notes.

After Alexander’s death in 323 BC, anti-Macedonian feeling in Athens turned against him. Remembering what had happened to Socrates, he left the city, reportedly saying he would not let Athens sin twice against philosophy. He died the following year. In 1996, archaeologists found the remains of the Lyceum while digging foundations for a new museum.