Athens Acropolis Parthenon: What it is, History, What it represents

Are you interested in the history Parthenon, the landmark building of the Acropolis in Athens? Do you want to find out the events that accompanied its evolution? Who commissioned its design?

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 thearchitecture that characterizes the Parthenon and the most important monuments of the Sacred Rock of Athens.

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The Parthenon: the history

The site

The most famous building of classicism, the great temple of Athena Parthenos, occupies a privileged position within the Acropolis complex of Athens.

In the 6th century B.C., under the tyrant Pisistratus this 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 of these monuments remains, for they were destroyed during the wars against the Persians,in 480 B.C.

When, in 447 B.C.E., the Parthenon building sites entered a phase of great activity, the area was far from being cleared, and numerous preexisting buildings imposed their own limits, including a temple called Hekatompedosnaos, which stood exactly at the area where the future Parthenon would rise.

After the occupation of the fortress by the Persians very little of the walls remained, and they proceeded in haste to rebuild them, also using many columns removed from the tombs and stones worked for other uses, even parts of the entablature belonging to the old Parthenon were not spared.

Once the circle of walls had been restored, the land was laid out, with huge filling and leveling works that made it possible to extend southward the esplanade where a new temple was to be built.

A new wall was erected, at the behest of the then ruling conservative party leader Cimon and designed by the architect Callicrates, to defend the sanctuary and to contain the new terraces.

In 461 BC. Cimon was exiled and his trusted architect Callicrates fell into disrepair.

Within a single year Pericles became not only head of the opposing democratic party and strategist of the city of Athens.

Pericles’ urban planning program and the birth of the Parthenon

The completion of the reconstruction of the Acropolis, which you can still admire today, was due precisely to the will of Pericles, the Athenian politician who launched a major building program in the 5th centuryto celebrate the city’s greatness and which culminated precisely with the construction of the Parthenon.

When thearchitect Ictinus and the sculptor Phidias, commissioned to carry out the state order, took over the building site, a mighty limestone basement from Piraeus, partially covered and buried by Cimon’s earthworks, had already been placed, and they had to come to terms with the pre-existing construction to create a grander building.

The existing temple, responded to traditional structures: it had six columns at the front and sixteen at the sides, and featured a two-chambered cella. The great hall divided into three aisles by two rows of ten columns, while the second hall, square in shape, had four columns ( as the rear hall of the Parthenon would be).

Phidias and Ictinus, who demanded more space to place his chryselephantine statue of the Athenian goddess, planned to enlarge both the interior space and the exterior volume, and they did so while maintaining the proportions of the existing temple ( of which the crepidome and certain elements of the colonnade survived) but extending it to the north and west.

The diameter of the existing columns dictated that, in order for the proportions of the classical canons to be respected, a certain spacing between the columns had to be maintained, and so, since they could not be enlarged, their number was increased from 6 to 8 on the facade and from 16 to 17 on the long sides.

The inner corridors, on the other hand, were shortened to enable the cell to be enlarged, which now reached a length of 19 meters.

In conclusion, the temple went from a size of 69.5 x 23.5 to 69.5 x 30.88 meters.

Having thus fixed the external contours and volumes, it was easy for Ictinus to freely arrange the interior spaces in accordance with the requirements of the sculptor Phidias.

The Parthenon under the Roman Empire

The Parthenon survived intact in its structure for a thousand years, although it underwent some internal adaptations. It was certainly still standing in the fourth century, but the grandeur of the building no longer reflected that of its city; Athens at that time had been reduced to a provincial city of theRoman Empire,

The city followed the fortunes of the Roman Empire from then on, passing in 395 to the Eastern Roman Empire.

The Parthenon under the Byzantine Empire

In the 9th Century, during the Byzantine rule of Emperor Theodosius II, an edict was promulgated ordering the closure of all pagan temples in the Roman empire, including the Parthenon, which was converted into a church (this entailed, 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).ù

The Parthenon under the Ottoman Empire

In 1458, the city of Athens was conquered by the Ottoman Empire and the building was converted into a mosque, with no major changes 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 used as an ammunition depot by the Turks, who mistakenly trusted that because of the monument’s importance the enemy fleets would not attack it.

The temple was severely damaged by it, particularly in the central part: the marble roof collapsed entirely, dragging with it part of the cell walls, 14 columns, and causing the friezes and metopes to fall apart.

Further damage was the theft of numerous sculptures by the Venetian general Francesco Morosini, who received orders from the Venetian senate to transport them to Venice. The statues were very large, however, and his equipment was unsuitable for their transport, to the point that in an attempt to remove Poseidon and the horses of Athena’s chariot from the western pediment, they plunged forty meters down the Acropolis and shattered.

Among the most famous portions of the Parthenon’s decorative apparatus taken by the Venetians is the so-called “Weber-Labordehead,” a female head now in the Louvre (in the nineteenth century it ended up in the collection of the German merchant David Weber, and was later sold by him to Count Léon of Laborde, and finally purchased by the Louvre in 1928).Some minor fragments among those removed were reused partly as building material, and some ended up in private collections, and from these later in some museums (three fragments are also in the Vatican Museums).

When the Venetian siege ended, the Ottomans continued to use the Parthenon as a mosque; the signs of cannonball bombardment are still visible today, as the Ottomans contiued to use it as a mosque but without restoring it.

The theft of the marbles

In 1798, Thomas Bruce, Earl of Elgin, was appointed “Ambassador Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of His Britannic Majesty to the Sublime Porte of Selim III, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire.”

Before his departure for Greece, he had contacted at least three British government officials asking if they would be interested in sending sculptors to make casts and drawings of the Parthenon sculptures.

The government’s response was entirely negative, however, the count decided to contact artists at his own expense under the supervision of the Neapolitan painter Giovanni Battista Lusieri.

Bruce thus arrived in Athens, but although he came with the sole purpose of studying the sculptures, in 1801 Lord Elgin began to remove the decorations from the Parthenon and surrounding structures, again under Lusieri’s supervision.

Elgin wanted the marbles to be placed in the British Museum, and sold them to the British government, which bought them at a low price, although other possible buyers, including Napoleon, had offered much more.

The Parthenon during the Greek War of Independence

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

The Erechtheion was used as an ammunition depot by the Ottomans during the Greek War of Independence (1821-1833), which ended the long Ottoman rule over Athens.

The Acropolis was besieged twice, first by the Greeks and then by the Ottomans. During the first siege, the Greeks offered bullets to the besieged to prevent them from melting the bronze sculptures of the Acropolis to create bullets

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 scholars 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.

The architecture of the Parthenon

The Parthenon’s architectural design 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 previous 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.

The building has two interior halls, the larger one housing the colossal chryselephantine statue ( in gold and ivory) of Athena Parthenos made by Phidias.

The cella was conceived as an unobstructed space totally autonomous from the external structure of the building. The effect is achieved by 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 theopisthodomos (the space behind the cella) to a square chamber: four Ionic columns (the choice of this style is adopted in response to the soaring proportions) 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 around the entire perimeter of the cella. 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’s fabrication; 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 amalgamate, and the hands of the different sculptors conform 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: to the east the Gigantomachy, to the west theAmazonomachy (the fight against giants and Amazons, respectively), to the north the so-called“Ilioupersis,” the destruction of Troy, and to the south the Centauromachy. Each of these warlike subjects taken from myth or epos conceals allegorical allusions more or less closely related to the city’s story: 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 squash 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 decorative apparatus of the building 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 impetuousness of the young horsemen slowly fades until the eastern side, where the rhythm is marked by the vertical folds of the robes of 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 decoration of the temple: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 rap- presentation 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.

Frequently asked questions

Conclusions

And we have come to the conclusion of this journey through the history and architecture of the Parthenon, a timeless masterpiece that reflects the artistic and cultural excellence of ancient Athens. From the temple’s origins as a symbol of devotion to Athena, to its construction under the leadership of Pericles, to the changes and transformations that have taken place over the centuries, we have seen how the Parthenon has passed through multiple eras and cultures, retaining its charm and symbolic value.

We explored the architectural ingenuity of Ictinus and Phidias, the complex sculptural apparatus with metopes, pediments and frieze celebrating the history and mythology of Greece. Every detail of the building, from the perfect proportions to the optical corrections, testifies to the extraordinary skill of the artists who worked to create a work unique in the world. Today, the Parthenon continues to be a source of inspiration and a symbol of grandeur and resilience for the modern world.

If you have any questions or would like to learn more about any aspect of visiting the Parthenon, I am here to help. I hope you found this article helpful in discovering the beauty of this extraordinary monument and understanding its unique role in the history of Western civilization.