Art & Architecture
The Parthenon: A Temple for a Golden Age
Built in just fifteen years, the Parthenon was a statement of power, piety and genius. Its story since then is almost as dramatic as the temple itself.
Rising above Athens on the rock of the Acropolis, the Parthenon is perhaps the most famous building of the ancient world. It has been a temple, a treasury, a church, a mosque and a gunpowder store, and it has survived fire, explosion and centuries of controversy. Its story begins in the aftermath of war.
Built on ruins
In 480 BC the Persian army sacked Athens and burned the temples on the Acropolis. For a generation the ruins were left as a memorial. Then, in 447 BC, the statesman Pericles launched an ambitious building programme, paid for in part with money from the Delian League, the alliance Athens led against Persia. Critics at the time complained that Athens was decking itself out like a vain woman with its allies’ money.
The architects Ictinus and Callicrates designed the temple, and the sculptor Phidias oversaw its decoration. Remarkably, the building was dedicated in 438 BC, and its sculptures were finished by 432 BC.
The genius in the details
The Parthenon looks simple, a rectangle of Doric columns, but it contains almost no straight lines. The platform curves gently upward in the middle, the columns lean slightly inward and swell a little along their height, a feature called entasis, and the corner columns are thicker than the others. These refinements correct optical illusions and give the building a sense of life and tension.
Inside stood a colossal statue of Athena Parthenos by Phidias, around twelve metres tall and covered in gold and ivory. The outside was decorated with sculptures of battles between gods and giants, Greeks and Amazons, and Lapiths and centaurs, as well as a continuous frieze of a great procession, probably the Panathenaic festival. Traces of paint show that much of this was once brightly coloured.
A long afterlife
In the sixth century AD the Parthenon became a Christian church, and after the Ottoman conquest it was turned into a mosque. In 1687, during a war between Venice and the Ottoman Empire, the Ottomans used it to store gunpowder. A Venetian cannonball struck it, and the explosion blew out its centre.
In the early nineteenth century, agents of Lord Elgin, the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, removed many of the surviving sculptures, which are now in the British Museum in London. Greece has long called for their return, and the debate is still very much alive. Since 2009 the Acropolis Museum in Athens has displayed the sculptures that remain in Greece, with space left waiting for the rest.
Seeing it today
Restoration work has been under way on the Acropolis since the 1970s, so scaffolding is part of the view. Visit early in the morning or late in the afternoon, when the marble glows gold, and then walk down to the Acropolis Museum, where the top floor is laid out to match the exact dimensions of the temple.
