Work begins on the Parthenon
Pericles sets the building works on the Acropolis in motion after the Persian Wars. The Parthenon is completed in fifteen years, in marble from Mount Pentelikon, with Phidias’ sculptures in the frieze and pediments.
The temple became the yardstick of classical architecture. Every temple front on a Swedish church or museum goes back to it.
In 480 BC the Persians sacked and burned the Acropolis, and for more than thirty years the ruined temples were left standing as a memorial to the war. Meanwhile Athens grew into a naval power at the head of the Delian League, an alliance of Greek city-states against Persia. When the League’s treasury was moved from the island of Delos to Athens in the mid-5th century BC, Pericles gained access to enormous sums. He pushed through the decision that the money should be spent on a building programme on the Acropolis. It gave work to thousands of craftsmen and showcased Athens as the leading city of Greece, but it came at a price: political opponents accused him of adorning his city with the allies’ money.
The architects were Ictinus and Callicrates, while the sculptor Phidias had artistic control. The temple is Doric, with eight columns on the short sides and seventeen on the long sides, but the frieze around the cella itself is Ionic – an unusual meeting of the orders. Almost no line is perfectly straight. The floor curves gently upwards towards the centre, the columns swell slightly and lean a little inwards, and the corner columns are somewhat thicker. Such refinements make the building look alive and firm rather than rigid. Inside the temple stood Phidias’ great gold-and-ivory statue of Athena. The temple was dedicated in 438 BC, and the pediment sculptures were completed a few years later.
The Parthenon had a long life after antiquity. It became a church, then a mosque under the Ottomans, and was finally used as a gunpowder store. During a Venetian siege in 1687 it was hit by a shell, the powder exploded and the central section was torn apart. In the early 19th century the British diplomat Lord Elgin had a large part of the sculptures taken to London, where they are now in the British Museum – an issue that Greece is still pursuing. When travellers and architects began measuring and drawing the temple in the 18th century, a new admiration for all things Greek grew up and became the basis of Neoclassicism. Since the 1970s an extensive restoration has been under way, correcting earlier mistakes and returning loose blocks to their original positions.