Parthenon
The temple of Athena on the Acropolis in Athens, built under Pericles. It is the most famous building of the Doric order and has served as a model for everything from Renaissance palaces to parliament buildings.
No line is entirely straight: the columns swell slightly and lean inwards, so that the temple looks straight to the eye.
The Parthenon was built on the Acropolis in Athens between 447 and 432 BC. The initiative came from the statesman Pericles, and the work was partly paid for with money from the Delian League, an alliance of Greek city-states. The architects were Ictinus and Callicrates. The sculptor Phidias was responsible for the artistic decoration. The temple was dedicated to the city’s patron goddess Athena. It replaced an older temple destroyed by the Persians in 480 BC. The building itself was completed in 438, while work on the sculptures continued for a few more years.
The temple is built of marble from Mount Pentelicus. It is a Doric temple with eight columns on the short sides and seventeen on the long sides. Inside the cella stood Phidias’s great statue of Athena Parthenos, made of gold and ivory. The statue was about twelve metres tall and has been lost. The temple also has Ionic features. The continuous frieze is typical of the Ionic style, and here the two styles are combined in an unusual way.
The decoration was extremely rich. Ninety-two relief panels, the metopes, showed battles between gods and giants, Greeks and Amazons, Lapiths and centaurs, as well as the fall of Troy. A long frieze around the cella shows a festive procession, usually interpreted as the Panathenaic procession. The pediments showed the birth of Athena and her contest with Poseidon for Athens. The sculptures were originally painted in strong colours. The frieze is about 160 metres long and shows hundreds of people, horses and sacrificial animals.
The building is full of deliberate refinements. The floor curves slightly upwards in the middle. The columns have a slight swelling, entasis, and lean a little inwards. The corner columns are thicker than the others. The aim is thought to have been to counteract optical illusions and give the temple a living quality.
The Parthenon has had many lives. It became a Christian church and, after the Ottoman conquest, a mosque. The Ottomans also used it as a gunpowder store. In 1687 it was hit by a Venetian shell during a siege. The powder exploded and the central section was destroyed. In the Christian period the temple became a church dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and a tower was built beside it.
In the early 19th century the British ambassador Lord Elgin had a large part of the sculptures removed. They were bought by the British state in 1816 and have since been in the British Museum in London. Greece demands their return, and the issue is one of the best-known disputes over the restitution of cultural heritage. The remaining sculptures are displayed in the Acropolis Museum, which opened in 2009.
A major restoration project has been under way since the 1970s. Later repairs using iron have been removed, since the iron rusted and split the marble. The Parthenon has become a symbol of democracy and classical culture. The building has served as a model for countless museums, banks, government buildings and monuments around the world.