It is difficult to reconstruct the siting of Classical Athenian cemeteries with any accuracy. The buildings in the centre of modern Athens were built on top of the Classical city, hampering any kind of systematic excavation. However, sustained rescue archaeology during the work on the extensions to the Metro over the last five years have revealed revealed some important grave ensembles - such as the polyandrion and graves in Salaminas Street in the Metaxourgio district. Beyond a few brief references in archaeological journals and in the daily press accompanied by a limited number of site plans and photographs, very little from these finds has been published, and thus there is simply not enough information to produce a complete picture of Classical cemeteries.

The archaeological data enable us to confirm the theory that there were graves along both sides of the major roads of Athens, and that there were also graves outside the walls. Establishing their positions helps us to reconstruct where the city wall ran and where its gates were. At the same time, there were, it seems, graves actually inside the city walls, but only two groups of graves on the north side of the Agora.