You get a better sense of ancient Athens in the nearby old town on the Acropolis’s slopes. Here the shops, narrow streets and pretty buildings with their colourful shutters and awnings are more reminiscent of an ancient colonnade or agora than any pile of clean, white stones in a hot, dry field.

You can also better appreciate the ancient world in one of the city’s jewel-like Greek Orthodox churches. They are, after all, in direct and unruptured succession from the Byzantine Empire. Inside, they are ornate and luridly coloured, kept blissfully cool not by air conditioning but by their height and artfully created currents of air passing through them. This is closer to the real temple experience than shuffling round the outside taking photographs.

The common thread running through these popular places is that they are built, not lying in ruins. All experiences we have of historical places are by definition imperfect. We will never be there in person. So, why not swallow our pride and enjoy a brazen imitation? None of the site’s outlines or stones need be lost. All original materials can be reincorporated into recreated buildings.

Tourists make for two places in the Agora. First, for the Temple of Hephaestus, a remarkably complete ancient temple which survived because the Byzantines were sensible enough to make it into a church. Tourists shelter in its shade and take photos. They also head for the remarkably complete Stoa, or covered market, of Attalos. The Stoa was almost completely rebuilt in the Fifties by the Athenian architect John Travlos. It is, in some important sense, a modern copy. And yet this is where the tourists come for shade, comfort and for a far better sense of the past.

Here, suddenly, ancient Greece comes to life. The heat recedes. The shade and the cool wind rustle through the columns, replicating the civilised pleasures of ancient urban existence. Children lie on the marble floor for the cool. Visitors sit on the step under the fluted Doric colonnade and watch their fellow tourists pass by. Unconsciously, they are echoing precisely the behaviour of ancient Athenians meeting, talking and simply being in their town square. These examples all show that tourists prefer finished buildings to confusing ruins, even if they are rebuilt simulations.

Running contrary to considerations of tourist comfort and comprehension is the religiously ascetic component to “doing the ruins”. If it is this hard and physically unpleasant then in some mysterious way, the wisdom goes, it must be doing us good. This is modern tourism as medieval pilgrimage. From the hardship of the journey flows the virtue of the trip. Would Athens’s thousands of visitors feel cheated if their visit to the ruins was too easy, informative or interesting?

Let’s compromise. The Acropolis can remain white and fake and hard to visit, but we should perfectly rebuild the Agora. Every building, street and colonnade should be restored and plugged prosperously into the surrounding city, filling the whole recreated neighbourhood with shops, specialised museums and detailed immersive experiences so that tourists can really imagine living and being in ancient Athens.

What would Athenians say? Conversations were encouraging. When I asked one what he likes most about the city, he responded: “The old town. You have narrow streets and beautiful old buildings. I feel like I am on vacation. I go there to walk and relax and buy food. I wish Athens was more like that.”

It can be, and city authorities should make it so — for the good of tourists and Athenians.