The Iera Odos was the main road in antiquity. It started from the Holy Gate of the wall of Athens, in the area of Kerameikos, and ended in Elefsina, in the Sanctuary of Demeter and Persephone. The worship procession to Eleusis passed through the Iera Odos. Before entering the sanctuary, the procession of the faithful rested and regrouped in Pompeion. Along the ancient road there were gardens, fruit trees, rural sanctuaries, shrines, cemeteries, funerary monuments. The Iera Odos was also an important trade route that connected Athens with the Peloponnese and central Greece.

Here is the main route linking the city of Athens with the deme of Acharnai, uncovered between 2000-2002 during the construction of the Attiki Odos motorway and the Suburban Railway. The initial construction phase of the ancient road dates to the classical period (5^th century BC), and it appears to have remained in use right up to modern times.

In the middle of the way to Eleusis, the Iera Odos met the Sanctuary of Aphrodite (today in the area of Chaidari, shortly after the Monastery of Daphni). The sanctuary is well known from a reference by the Greek traveler Pausanias who identified it during his course to Eleusina. The Sanctuary was in use from the classical to the Roman period.

In 1996, at the site Bouri, in the west of Alepochori, the remains of a sanctuary of the Archaic period (7th - 6th century BC.) were revealed and more than 12,000 offerings. The kind of the offerings indicates the worship of a female deity, possibly of a chthonic character and with a healing ability.