Acropolis of Athens: History, Construction and Architecture

Are you interested in the history of the Acropolis of Athens? Do you want to find out what were the events that accompanied its evolution? Who commissioned and designed its monuments?

In this article you will find a brief history with the salient events that affected the building and a more in-depth one, with historical notes related to the architecture that characterizes the Parthenon and the most important monuments of the Sacred Rock of Athens.

Are you ready? Let’s get started!

IMPORTANT! Before I begin this article, I want to warn you: the Acropolis of Athens is one of the most visited tourist attractions in Greece and in the world. With a year-round tourist season now, it is almost certain that when you want to visit it, you will find a long queue at the ticket offices. To avoid this, we recommend you buy your ticket online. Click below to book your admission and access the Acropolis in an instant.

Acropolis of Athens: history in brief

The foundation of the acropolis dates as far back as Mycenaean times, when, because of the site’s elevated location, a veritable fortress from which enemies could be glimpsed in advance, a fortified citadel was founded there to house the monarch’s residence.

Between the 6th and 5th centuries, political conditions changed from a monarchical structure to a democratic form of government, the Acropolis went from being an inhabited citadel to becoming the spiritual center of the settlement, dedicated to the worship of deities. The center of the city’s life was moved to the agora, and the strategic function was gradually abandoned, thanks in part to the new, wider defensive walls that surrounded the entire settlement.

In the 6th century bc, under the tyrant Pisistratus the area was chosen for the celebration of the Panathenae, the festivals dedicated to the goddess Athena, and a monumental character began to be given to the buildings present; no trace remains of these monuments, they were in fact destroyed during the wars against the Persians, in 480 bc.

The reconstruction of the Acropolis, which you can still admire today, was due to the will of Pericles, the Athenian politician who in the 5th Century initiated a major building program to celebrate the city’s greatness, and which culminated in one of the most famous monuments of antiquity: the Parthenon.

The Acropolis always remained the religious and political symbol of Athens, but above all of the values of the classical world.

During the later Hellenistic and Roman eras, which used Greek art as a model, its buildings were restored and new monuments were added.

In the9th century, during Byzantine rule, the temple was converted into a church (this involved, in addition to the construction of an apse, a number of the damage to the Parthenon frieze, which was adapted in places where the pagan forms harmonized poorly with the Christian ones), and in 1458 into a mosque, with no substantial changes being made to it under Muslim occupation.

In 1687, during the Venetians’ siege against the Ottomans in the Morean War, an incendiary bomb reached the interior of the Parthenon, which was being used as a Turkish ammunition depot; the explosion destroyed much of the southern portion of the building, which was later converted into a smaller mosque.

During the Greek War of Independence against the Ottoman Empire, between 1821 and 1829, the Acropolis suffered further damage.

Following the final victory of the Greeks, the area became an archaeological zone, and in 1832 the Kingdom of Greece undertook restoration work on the Acropolis, overseeing the work were the two German scholarsI Ludwig Ross and Eduard Shaubert. The philosophy of the intervention was to unearth the monument as it had been conceived in classical Greece, demolishing all the medieval and Ottoman buildings constructed in later centuries.

Since 1987 the complex has been part of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

In 2009, the Acropolis Museum was inaugurated, which preserves all the archaeological finds and sculptural apparatus discovered during the restorations.

Acropolis of Athens: In-depth history and architecture

Historical context

The construction of the Acropolis of Athens took place in the historical period that historians refer to as the Classical Age.

This time frame, encompassing a century and a half of history, can be divided into two major phases.

In the first, which reaches up to the Peloponnesian War (431 – 404 B.C.), Athens, capital of the region called Attica, represents the hub and reference point of Classical Greece, so much so that the achievements in the capital often came to tarnish the artistic production of the other centers of Greece.

The political scene of the second half of the fifth century,is dominated by the figure of a great strategist of the democratic faction, Pericles.

Following the wars against the Persians, the Ionian cities, once subject to the Arabs, allied themselves with Athens, forming an alliance that had its center in theIsle of Delos.

To defend themselves against a possible Persian attack, all the colonies paid annual tributes to the city of Athens (money, ships, offerings..), to such an extent that Athens became extremely wealthy and Pericles, a controversial and persuasive figure, seized the proceeds of the Delian league to rebuild and beautify the Acropolis, to the general discontent of the Ionian allies.

During the two decades that Pericles held power, numerous monuments would be built, making Athens the artistic school of the Hellas.

Following his death in the great plague of 429, it will be the conservative faction that will come to power.

From the end of the fifth century, however, a second phase, termed Late Classical, opens, which within fifty years will lead to the crisis of the pòlis system and the creation of theempire of Alexander the Great.

The Parthenon complex and the building site of the Acropolis in Athens

In the political and cultural climate of fifth-century Athens , art, in all its manifestations, holds great social and political value. Within a generation the different factions in power in Athens would shape the face of the Acropolis fortress, the seat of the city’s oldest and most important cults.

At first, with Pericles in charge, Athens was placed at the head of the city-states present in the Delio-Attic League, which brought together Athens and many cities from the regions of Ionia and the Hellespont that had taken part in the victories over Persia during the Peloponnesian Wars.

In order to provide employment for thousands of laborers and craftsmen, Pericles promoted a major building project that led to the construction of numerous wonders in the Acropolis, including the Parthenon.

Artists were given the task of representing his city, with a grandiose plan for the organic arrangement of the sacred rock.

About the construction work, the philosopher Plutarch wrote:

As materials therefore marble, bronze, ivory, ebony, gold, cypress were used, the workers who worked and put them in place were carpenters, sculptors, founders, stonemasons, gilders, ivory engravers, painters, mosaicists, chiselers, suppliers of these materials were merchants, sailors helmsmen for sea transport, for land transport on the other hand carters, coachmen, charioteers, ropemakers, linen weavers, cooks, cellarers, miners, in short, just as the strategist has his army, so each trade had a well-organized mass of laborers who were like a tool at his disposal… Works grew, admirable in grandeur, inimitable in grace and beauty, and artists rivaled in exalting, with technical perfection, their work, but more than anything else the rapidity was astounding. And of all of them Phidias decided everything and was superintendent of everything, by appointment of Pericles.

The making of the Parthenon, the “temple of Athena,” an exemplary complex of the classical period, was between 447 and 432 BCE.

The plan is for a great temple to erase the memory of the Persian invasion and celebrate Athena, the city’s patroness.

The area chosen for the building of the temple is located in the southern sector of the Acropolis. The esplanade was already occupied in Archaic times by a building site for the construction of a temple dedicated to Athena Parthenos, or “virgin” Athena, which was never finished, and later devastated, by Xerxes’ Persians.

The large new temple exploited its basement, enlarging it and changing its proportions.

Charged by Pericles to oversee all work on the acropolis, he was the official artist of Attica’s capital, the Athenian sculptor and architect Phidias.

Three architects mainly collaborated on Phidias’ design: Ictinus, Mnesicles, and Callicrates.

You must always consider that the different monuments, but also the history of their construction and placement or the architects to whom contracts are awarded reflect the course of Athenian political life, divided between the democratic faction in power with Pericles and the conservative opposition.

This division is also materialized in the opposition between two schools, that of Ictinus and Mnesicles, who favored the Doric order albeit enriched with Ionic cues, and that of Callicrates, of more intact Ionic training.

Architecture notions to know

But what is the Doric order? What about the Ionic one?

Before I begin to describe the architecture of the Acropolis there are some architectural concepts you need to know that will help you better understand my descriptions.

You will often hear about architectural order.

By this term we mean a set of geometric and mathematical rules by which the dimensions of each element of a building are consistently related to each other and to the dimensions of the building as a whole.

This means, for example, that, set as the initial module the base diameter of a column, its height will be given by a multiple of that module, and so on.

Among the orders the oldest and most majestic is the Doric, so called because it is related to the lineage of the Dorians. It was used exclusively in temple construction and you will recognize it by its massive proportions.

The characteristic elements of the Doric order are:

• the base, called the stylobate;
• the column, that is, the supporting element, consisting of the shaft and capital;
• The set of structural and decorative elements that rest above the capitals is called the entablature. The entablature consists of three elements called the architrave, frieze, and cornice, respectively. Thearchitrave is the element on which the roof beams rest and is the element that connects all the column capitals. The lintel is surmounted along its entire length by a frieze; this runs along the entire perimeter of the temple and is composed of the orderly alternation of metopes and triglyphs. These are in both cases slabs, the former were inserted on the heads of the beams,the latter in the space between beams. While triglyphs are recognizable by their four vertical grooves, the latter are often decorated in bas-relief.
• Above the frieze is the cornice, whose function is to protect the bas-reliefs from the weather;
• The roofs of temples always have gabled roofs, the pitches of which, at the shorter sides, form two isosceles triangles that are called gables;
• The combination of the gables and the cornices that surround them constitute the gables of the temple.

The second order you will read about in this article has Eastern origins and is theIonian order, also named after the people who began using it, the Ionians.

I will not go into detail about this order as well, but imagine that if the column of the Doric order can be compared to the massive power of the male body, the Ionic order is more like the slenderness and grace of the female body, which is why it was often used for the construction of temples dedicated to goddesses.

The greater slenderness is partly conferred by the introduction of the plinth, which is absent in the Doric, and by the capital, which you will easily recognize because of the typical volutes.

Now that you have learned these little facts I can begin to describe the architecture of the Acropolis!

The architecture of the Parthenon

The architectural design of the Parthenon is largely due to the architect Ictinus, assisted to a secondary degree by a second, more senior architect named Callicrates, and under the supervision of Phidias.

Analysis of the monument has shown the existence of precise mathematical calculations underlying its construction, the result of a compromise between the desire to create a totally new building and the need to use elements of the earlier factory. To the narrow temple of tradition, with six columns on the facade, Ictinus replaces an octastyle building, a novelty compared to traditional Doric canons. This expedient produces the enlargement of the space available for the cella, which at this point is almost 19 meters wide instead of 12.

Inside, the eye, directing itself to the colossal chrysoelephantine (gold and ivory) statue of Athena Parthenos made by Phidias, perceived the cella as a cleared space totally autonomous from the outer structure of the building.

The effect is achieved with the brilliant and very simple solution of two parallel rows of Doric columns on the long sides of the cella connected on the short side opposite the entrance: the U-shaped colonnade with two orders, frames the statue lo and supports the coffered ceiling, cancelling the perception of the main beam.

Tradition and innovation also blend in the other parts of the building: in the proportions of the columns of the peristyle (the colonnaded portico surrounding the perimeter of the building), powerful but slender, as in the second row of six Doric columns on each of the short sides, even slimmer.

On the side opposite that of the cella, moreover, a wide opening leads from the opisthodomos (the space behind the cella) to a square chamber: four Ionic columns support the roof here, reaching the height of the ceilings thanks to the slender proportions.

Architecturally, striking in the building is the perfection of the overall effect, achieved by the implementation of optical corrections, typical of Doric temple architecture, to which are also added minimal corrections made here individual elements.

The care in the execution of the smallest details is complemented by the pictorial and sculptural decoration. On the Pentelic marble structure, the use of polychromy, with tones of blue, red, and gold, marked certain elements such as the moldings and coffers, emphasizing the volumes of the building.

The sculptural apparatus of the Parthenon

The sculptural decoration of the building includes the metopes of the Doric frieze, the pediments with colossal figures, and the frieze 160 meters long and about one meter high, which wrapped the cell around the entire perimeter.

Thousands of figures, in high and bas-relief and in the round, are probably executed by different teams of sculptors during the 15-year period of work on the temple building; they record the breakthroughs, discoveries, and formal revolutions that Parthenonian sculpture achieved in this albeit brief period.

The directives imposed by Phidias, probably illustrated by scaled-down sketches and life-size models of the individual parts, are transposed by the workshops participating in the factory.

Initial stylistic discrepancies soon amalgamated, and the hands of the different sculptors conformed to the formal requirements expressed by the superintendent of works.

Even once the work on the acropolis was completed, the imprint left by Phidias in the different workshops would be so powerful that it would influence all future Attic production.

Moreover, the Parthenon factory, a new school of style, materializes a new ethical and religious world, characterized by the renewal of cults: the new forms are for a new divine world, that of the Athens of Pericles and the progressive party, of which Phidias represents the voice.

The Doric frieze, probably the first sector of the decoration to be made, is decorated with 42 metopes depicting different subjects:

• on the east the Gigantomachy;
• on the west theAmazonomachy (the fight against giants and amazons, respectively);
• to the north the so-calledIlioupersis, the destruction of Troy;
• to the south the Centauromachy.

Each of these warlike subjects drawn from myth (or epos) conceals allegorical allusions more or less closely related to the city’s affairs: in the fight against the Amazons, first on the western side visible from the acropolis entrance, the Athenians recognized clashes with the Persians, while the melee with the Centaurs, already depicted in other monuments such as the pediment of the temple of Zeus at Olympia, more generically symbolizes the struggle between bestiality rationality.

The repeated theme of the clash between two figures is resolved with different solutions that illustrate the efforts in the search for more or less effective compositional patterns figures that concentrate and crush within a triangle occupying the central part of the available space, or conversely, drawing wide curves, move away from the center in more open compositions.

The figures, carved in Pentelic marble, must certainly have been enriched with gilded bronze elements; traces of color indicate that they were also polychrome, with parts in red and blue and details in green, red and gilding.

The building’s decorative apparatus was complemented by a new element in the context of Doric-order architecture: the internal frieze, which like a ribbon completely enveloped the cella.

Depicted there, starting from the southwest corner, is the realistic theme of the procession of the Panathenae, the festivals and games in honor of Athena that were celebrated every four years for nine days beginning on July 28, the day of the goddess’s supposed birth.

During this festival, the procession of Athenian citizens would pass through the city, then face the ascent to the Acropolis to celebrate Athena, protector of the polis, in her temple.

In very low relief, the procession of the industrious and proud Athenian society is reproduced: restless horses and young horsemen chase each other in excited groups starting from the southwest corner, proceeding north and east and reaching the chariots preceded by the musicians and offering bearers, who lead the animals to the sacrifice.

The vitality and impetuosity of the young horsemen slowly fades until the eastern side, where the rhythm is marked by the vertical folds of the robes of the Athenian maidens offering the sacred peplos to the goddess Athena.

Attending the scene are the heroes of Athens, responsible for and guarantors of the city’s greatness, and the Olympian gods, now fully humanized, are distinguished from mortals only by the fact, seated, that they are joined in height only by the standing human figures.

The two pediments, probably executed between 440 and 432 2.C., represent the culmination of the temple’s decoration: on the eastern pediment the birth of Athena, on the western pediment the contest between Athena and Poseidon for the possession of Attica. Both are composed according to the same principle, with the representation in the central area of a key event, the tension of which is diluted by proceeding to the corners.

The two pediments house figures in the round, isolated or grouped in free compositions, in motion or at rest. Dionysus , lying on his cloak, watches the sunrise; Aphrodite indulges in Dione’s lap, crouching; Iris hurls herself to stop Poseidon’s horse.

The other buildings of the Acropolis

Other buildings will complete the new arrangement of the Acropolis esplanade, and each of them, with new architectural solutions, will play the role of a milestone for the history of Greek architecture.

The Propylaea

Buildings initially arose around the Parthenon that corresponded to the Periclean program, aimed at the construction of buildings that were functional and complementary to each other as part of an organic urban plan.

The fundamental need is, at this stage, the monumentalization of the sacred area.

In fact, an eventual access that was to crown the defensive walls had, in addition, on the one hand to meet the needs of the annual Panatee procession and, on the other hand, to solve the problem of the sharp difference in height between the end of the steep ramp to the acropolis and the level of the esplanade.

These real challenges of architectural design were solved by Mnesicles, a student of Ictinus, with the creation of the volume of the Propylaea; the name literally means “by the gates,” it is a building body in which the Doric and Ionic orders interpenetrate.

The intersection between the horizontal plane of the acropolis and the slope of the access road is thus resolved within the building and masked in it.

Behind the six Doric columns of the east facade, facing outward and prolonged by two short perpendicular wings, the tall vestibule is supported by two rows of Ionic columns, tall and slender the processional way crosses it uphill to the wide driveway opening in the center, while on the sides narrower doorways allow pedestrian access side facing the acropolis, also Doric and hexastyle, re-proposing on a smaller scale the same proportions and membranes as the Parthenon’s east façade, which is three-quarter to the right of those exiting the Propylaea. On the outside, only the different heights of the roofs, actually invisible to those ascending to the Acropolis, signal the difference in height between the eastern and western facades.

The complex, which envisioned two square halls behind the side wings of the eastern Doric portico and two larger ones facing the esplanade, was never finished because of opposition from supporters of the more ancient cults practiced on the stronghold of the ‘acropolis, whose spaces were being eroded by Mnesicles’ design.

The factory of Callicrates

Callicrates, an architect who began his work on the Acropolis by collaborating on the Parthenon will be assigned, after the death of Pericles and the exile imposed on his architects, to construct new buildings.

In Callicrates’ achievements is embodied the opposition to the Periclean projects by the conservative faction, which expresses itself in the Ionian ways most congenial to the architect: the placement of the new buildings no longer responds to an organic plan for the arrangement of the stronghold of the acropolis, but rather follows a program of exaltation of traditional cults, with the building of monuments precious even in building material and richly decorated, highly representative but little used.

the small temple of Athena Nike

On the rampart that extends south of the Propylaea the small temple of Athena Nike (victorious Athena) is then built, completed in 410 B.C.: a wide and shallow cella opens onto the façade adorned with four Ionic columns, replicated on the rear side: the temple is thus amphiprostyle.

Above the architrave, a continuous frieze carved and painted on all four sides enriches the decorative effect of the monument, which is further enhanced by the balustrade enclosing the balustrade, externally adorned with figures of Nikai (the personifications of Victory). The decorative richness of the complex, in contrast to the severity of the Propylaea, documents the Ionian imprint of Athenian art of this period.

The Erechtheion

In the same spirit, is made between 421 and 406 B.C. theErechtheion, on the northern edge of the acropolis, the attribution is not certain , many consider Philocles the designer of the small temple, while some say it was still made to a design by Callicrates himself.

The building is located near a dip in the elevation of the rock. Inside were venerated theolive tree donated by Athena, traces of Poseidon’s trident, the lair of the sacred serpent, and the tomb of the Attic hero Cecrope.

The need to enclose these very ancient cults, linked to precise locations on the acropolis, in a single body of the building and the irregularity of the rocky plane strongly conditioned the design of the building.

The complex was conceived with volumes that are articulated on two axes that intersect at ninety degrees Along the east-west axis is the first sector, a rectangular building body, open to the east with a portico of six elegant Ionic columns from which one enters the vast cella dedicated to Athena.

On the opposite side is the façade, higher to bridge the difference in height, and on two levels, with four walled columns punctuating walls open by windows and set against a high wall. The latter represents the lateral limit of the second sector, oriented perpendicularly to the first: it is accessed from the northern side through another portico with tall slender columns.

The monumental door opens onto an elongated room lit by windows on the western facade: at the bottom is the staircase leading to the small loggia on the southern side, supported by six figures of maidens, the Caryatids. The six sculptures are attributed to the school of Alcamenes, a collaborator of Phidias pel construction site of the Parthenon: their supporting function is masked by the elegant grace of the female body wrapped in the peplos rippled with deep folds, stretched at the point where the leg advances suggesting movement.

All the volumes are also organically connected thanks to the elements of Ionic decoration, among which is the frieze crowning the top of the walls around the entire perimeter of the building, with figures carved in white marble on a background of blue Eleusinian stone.

Frequently asked questions

Conclusions

Here we have come to the end of this long post on the history of the Acropolis of Athens, in which I told you about its iconic architecture, and the artists who contributed to its creation, and whose majesty continues to fascinate travelers from all over the world.

If you have any doubts or other questions, leave a comment below, I will be happy to answer them!