Greek Architecture: the Temple, the Theatre and the Ideals

Greek architecture is the building art of ancient Greece, roughly 700–30 BC. It is known for temples of marble and limestone with columns in three orders, Doric, Ionic and Corinthian, for theatres set in natural hillsides and for its pursuit of harmony and proportion.

Facts

The temple as ideal

The Greek temple was not a gathering place like a church but a home for the god’s statue. The building itself is simple: a rectangular room, the cella, with a ring of columns around it and a low gabled roof with a pediment. The altar stood outdoors in front. The basic form is called the temple and recurs throughout Western architecture.

The construction was based on post and lintel. Large stone blocks were laid on top of each other without mortar and held together by metal clamps. The roof span was limited by the strength of the stone, which explains why temple rooms are narrow and columns closely spaced. The marble was often painted in bright colours, which we find hard to imagine today.

The orders and the Acropolis

The three orders differ in expression: the Doric is sturdy and plain, the Ionic elegant with volutes, the Corinthian rich with foliage. Read the whole difference in the guide to the classical orders. The Roman architect Vitruvius later wrote down the rules, and his book became very important for the Renaissance.

On the Acropolis in Athens the Parthenon, a temple of Athena, was built between 447 and 432 BC by the architects Iktinos and Kallikrates with sculpture by Phidias. It is Doric in style but has an Ionic frieze around the cella. Almost no lines are perfectly straight: the columns swell slightly (entasis) and the floor curves to correct optical illusions. Next to it lies the Erechtheion, with the famous south porch where female figures, caryatids, carry the roof, and the gateway Propylaea. The Parthenon has eight columns on the short sides and seventeen on the long sides, and its dimensions follow a recurring ratio.

The theatre and the city

The Greeks also built for the people. The theatre at Epidaurus from the fourth century BC lies in a hillside with curved rows of stone seats for about 14,000 spectators and is renowned for its acoustics: sound from the orchestra is heard clearly even in the top rows. The theatres later shaped the Roman ones and those of the Renaissance. The theatre was also part of religious festivals, such as the festival of Dionysus in Athens, where tragedies by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides were performed.

The colonnades of the agora, the stoas, and council houses show that architecture belonged to the city’s public life. In Italy and Sicily the Greeks founded colonies that left spectacular temples, among them Paestum, where three well-preserved Doric temples still stand, and the Temple of Hephaestus in Athens is one of the best preserved.

The afterlife

After Alexander the Great Greek building spread across the Middle East and Egypt in the Hellenistic period. The Corinthian style became popular, and the oldest known Corinthian capital in a temple interior is at Bassae. The Romans took over everything and passed it on; read about Roman architecture.

In the Renaissance and in Neoclassicism the Greek ideals were revived, and Greek temple fronts recur in museums, banks and parliaments all over the world; see the guide to Neoclassical architecture. The sculptures, such as the Winged Victory of Samothrace and the Laocoön group, led art at the same time. The Hellenistic and Classical periods are described under the Greek style and antiquity.

How to recognise it

Exercise

Which order has volute capitals?