Top Attractions of Athens, Greece, The Parthenon (Παρθενών)

The Parthenon, an icon of Western civilization, is one of the most famous buildings in the world. The temple was built in the fifth century BC and overlooks the city of Athens from its majestic position on top of the sacred Acropolis Hill.

 Parthenon

Close-up view of the Parthenon

 

The Parthenon was built in honor of the goddess Athena Parthenos (virgin Athena), patroness of the city of Athens. Initially the temple was known as the Great Temple (Megas Naos), but later became known by the name of Parthenon.

History

The current Parthenon was not the first temple built here during the Antiquity. There are traces of two earlier - and slightly smaller - temples, the first in stone, and the second in marble.

 

Parthenon at night

 Detail of the Parthenon

 

 Shortly after the Persians destroyed all the buildings on the Acropolis in 480 BC, Pericles commissioned the construction of a new large temple and assigned architect and sculptor Pheidias the supervision of the project. The design of the Parthenon is attributed to Kallikrates and Iktinos. Construction started in 447 BC and the temple was completed just nine years later. Pheidias continued to work on the magnificent sculptures that decorated the temple until 432 BC.

After the Antiquity the Parthenon was converted into a church and during the Ottoman occupation of Athens it was used as an arsenal. It became a ruin only in 1687 when the Venetians, who besieged the Ottomans, bombarded the Acropolis from the Philopappos Hill. 

 

Detail of the inner frieze

The ammunition that was stored in the Parthenon exploded, destroying the roof, the interior and fourteen columns.

The Temple

The Parthenon was built as a peripteros - a temple surrounded by columns - in the Doric order. The temple measures 30.86 by 69.51 meters (approx. 101 x 228 ft) and contained two cellae (inner chambers). The east cella housed the Athena Parthenos, a large statue of the goddess Athena. The west cella was exclusively used by priests and contained the treasury of the Delian League (an alliance of Greek city-states).

The Parthenon was decorated with numerous sculptures and reliefs. There were some fifty sculptures on the pediments alone; most of the surviving sculptures are on display at the British Museum in London, while some are at the nearby Acropolis Museum. There were two friezes: the inner frieze at the cellae and the outer frieze, which consisted of triglyphs (vertical stripes) and metopes (rectangular tablets) with relief sculptures. The inner frieze was designed by Pheidias and depicted the Panathenaea, the festival held in honor of Athena. Many of the metopes and parts of the inner frieze can be seen in the British Museum as well.

 

SE Corner

To achieve visual perfection, the creators of the Parthenon used optical refinements to seemingly defy the laws of perspective. The columns are slightly slanted inwards and have a curved shape. This results in making the horizontal and vertical lines of the building look perfectly straight to the naked eye.

Most people think that ancient temples always had natural, plain marble colors. But the buildings and statues in the Antiquity were often very colorful. The Parthenon was no exception: sculptures on the friezes and pediment as well as the roof were brightly painted in blue, red and gold colors.

Statue of Athena Parthenos

 A neoclassical statue of Athena stands in front of the Austrian Parliament Building in Vienna.

The main purpose of the temple was to house the close to twelve meters tall statue of Athena Parthenos, created by Pheidias. The statue was chryselephantine - made of gold and ivory - and built around a wooden frame. And like all other Parthenon sculptures, the statue was painted in bright colors, mainly blue and red.
Athena was depicted standing as a helmeted martial goddess. Her left hand rested on a shield and in her right hand she held a statue of a winged Nike. Unfortunately the original statue is lost but a modern full-scale replica of the Athena Parthenos (and the Parthenon) can be seen in Nashville, TN, in the United States.

National Archaelogical Museum in Greece

  National Archaeological Museum

The National Archaeological Museum of Athens (Greek: Εθνικό Αρχαιολογικό Μουσείο) in Athens houses some of the most important artifacts from a variety of archaeological locations around Greece from prehistory to late antiquity. It is considered one of the great museums in the world and contains the richest collection of artifacts from the Greek antiquity worldwide .
 It is situated in the Exarhia area in central Athens between the streets Epirus, Bouboulina and Tositsa while its entrance is on the Patission Avenue adjacent to the historical building of the Athens Polytechnic. Today the museum is directed by Nikolaos Kaltsas.

History
The first national archaeological museum in Greece was established by prime minister of Greece Ioannis Kapodistrias in Aigina in 1829. Since then the archaeological collection has been moved to a number of exhibition places until 1858, when an international architectural competition was announced for the location and the architectural design of the new museum [2]. The current location was proposed and the construction of the museum's building began in 1866 and was completed in 1889 using funds from the Greek Government, the Greek Archaeological Society and the society of Mycenae. Major benefactors were Eleni Tositsa who donated the land for the building of the museum, Demetrios and Nikolaos Vernardakis from Saint Petersburg who donated a large amount for the completion of the museum.
The initial name for the museum was The Central Museum and it was renamed to its current name in 1881 by prime minister of Greece Charilaos Trikoupis . During the World War II the museum was closed and the antiquities were sealed in special protective boxes and buried, in order to avoid their destruction. In 1945 exhibits were again displayed under the direction of Christos Karouzos. The south wing of the museum houses the Epigraphic Museum with the richest collection of inscriptions in the world. The inscriptions museum expanded between 1953-1960 with the architectural designs of Patroklos Karantinos

The building

The museum has an imposing neo-classical design which was very popular in Europe at the time and is in full accordance with the classical style artifacts that it houses. The initial plan was conceived by the architect Ludwig Lange and it was later modified by Panages Kalkos who was the main architect, Harmodios Vlachos and Ernst Ziller. At the front of the museum there is a large neo-classic design garden which is decorated with sculptures .
Expansions and renovations

The building has undergone many expansions. Most important were the construction of new east wing in the early 20th century based on the plans of Anastasios Metaxas and the erection of a two-storeyed building, designed by George Nomikos, in 1932-1939. These expansions were necessary to accommodate the rapidly expanding collection of artifacts. The most recent refurbishment of the museum took more than 1.5 years to complete, during which the museum remained completely closed. It reopened in July 2004, in time for the Athens Olympics and it included aesthetic and technical upgrade of the building, installation of a modern air-conditioning system, reorganisation of the museum's collection and repair of the damage that the 1999 earthquake left to the building. The Minoan frescoes rooms opened to the public in 2005. Today, there is a renewed discussion regarding the need to further expand the museum to adjacent areas.

The museum's collections are organized in sections :

• Prehistoric collection (Neolithic, Cycladic, Mycenaean)
  
• Sculptures collection
• Vase and Minor Objects Collection
• Santorini findings
• Metallurgy Collection
• Stathatos Collection
• Vlastos Collection
• Egyptian Art collection donated by Demetrios Ioannou and Alexander Rostovich
• Near Eastern Antiquities Collection

Some of the ancient artists whose work is presented in the museum are Myron, Scopas, Euthymides, Lydos, Agoracritus, Agasias, Cimon of Cleonae, Damophon, Aison (vase painter), Polygnotos (vase painter).

Collections include sculpture work, Loutrophoros, amphora, Hydria, Skyphos, Krater, Pelike, and lekythos vessels, Stele, frescoes, jewellery, weapons, tools, coins, toys and other ancient items.

Artifacts derive from archaeological excavations in Santorini, Mycenae, Tiryns, Dodona, Vaphio, Rhamnous, Lycosura, Aegean islands, Delos, the Temple of Aphaea in Aegina, the Sanctuary of Artemis Orthia in Sparta, Pylos, Thebes, Athens, the Antikythera wreck and from various other places across Greece.

The museum houses the archaic terracota statuette daidala that inspired the designers of the 2004 Athens Olympics maskots Athena and Phevos.

Two of the newest exhibits of the museum include a 4th century BC golden funenary wreath and a 6th century BC marble statue of a woman, which were returned as stolen artifacts to Greece in 2008 by the Getty Museum in California, after a 10 year-old legal dispute between the Getty Center and the Greek Government . One year earlier, the Los Angeles foundation agreed to return a 4th century BC tombstone from near Thebes and a 6th century BC votive relief from the island of Thassos .

There is also a large number of artifacts that are currently not exhibited, at the museum's vast storage rooms.

Two of the newest exhibits of the museum include a 4th century BC golden funenary wreath and a 6th century BC marble statue of a woman, which were returned as stolen artifacts to Greece in 2008 by the Getty Museum in California, after a 10 year-old legal dispute between the Getty Center and the Greek Government . One year earlier, the Los Angeles foundation agreed to return a 4th century BC tombstone from near Thebes and a 6th century BC votive relief from the island of Thassos .

picture from National Archaelogical Museum in Greece

Early Cycladic 3200-2200 BC Found in Naxos

Early Cycladic pottery from 2800-2300 BC Found in Syros

16th Century BC Mask found in Mycenae often erroneously called the Mask of Agamemnon

  

14th to 13th Century Wall Painting from Tiryns

 

Aphrodite, Pan and Eros marble statue

 

 200AD marble head found in Theater of Dionysious in Athens

 Bronze statue of Emperor Augustus from around 12-10 BC

 

 350-325 BC funerary sculpture of the warrior Aristonautes

1st century BC head of Dionysious

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The Acropolis museum

The Museum stands in the southeastern corner of the Acropolis and houses priceless archaeological finds kept in chronological order, starting with the Archaic (800-600 B.C.), and going to the Classical (500- 400 B.C.), Hellenistic (300 B.C.) and Roman periods. Among other outstanding works of art housed in the Museum's 9 rooms are sculptures and sculptured reliefs from the pediments, frieze and metopes of the Parthenon, the Erechtheio and the Temple of Athena Nike. Also on display is the unique collection of the "Kore" statues (young girls with the characteristic Archaic smile). Room exhibits the famous "Moschophoros", a man bearing a calf on his shoulders. This is an exceptionally fine work, noted for its composition and elasticity of form.
In Room V are pedimental figures of the "Gigantomachia", or Battle of the Giants from the old Temple of Athena, built by the Peisistratids. More works of the so-called "Severe Style" are on display in Room VI, among them a sculptured relief showing a "Contemplating Athena" who seems absorbed in her thoughts as she is resting her head on her spear. The most characteristic of works belonging to the "severe" style are the "Kritias Boy", and the "blond boy", so called because of the yellow colour of the hair.
In Room IV are the majority of the "Kore" statues, among them the "Peplos Kori", so called from the girded Dorian peplos (mantle) she wears over her chiton. The statue is famous both for its facial expression and its original colours.

Acropolis Museum Pictures

Base of a statue dedicated to the chorus leader Atravos,
in tribute to his victory in theatrical contest.
Atarvos Base
Prokne and her dead son Itys.
Attributed to Alkamenes.

Prokne and Itys

The original Caryatids (Caryatides) statues from the Erechtheion
protected behind glass in the Acropolis Museum.

The original Caryatids (Caryatides) statues from the Erechtheion
protected behind glass in the Acropolis Museum.
Caryatids
Lioness attacking a cow. From an unknown temple on the Acropolis
Limestone, c. 600 BCE (Acropolis Museum)
Lioness and Cow Pediment
Hercules killing the Hydra. Iolaos on the left is on the chariot
Shalow relief, original vividly painted, from the pediment
of an unknown building on the Acropolis.
Limestone, c. 600 BCE (Acropolis Museum)
Hercules and Hydra Pediment

Herakles at Olympus, in front of Zeus (seated), Hera, and Athena (missing). Hermes stands at the far right. From an unknown building on the Acropolis.
Limestone, c. 550-540 BCE (Acropolis Museum)
Herakles Pediment

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History of Greece

The infinite variety of the landscape of mainland Greece, ranging from snow-capped rugged mountains to sun drenched idyllic beaches, is equalled, if not surpassed, by the beauty of the seascape of almost one thousand five hundred islands scattered over the translucent waters of the Aegean and Ionian Seas. Close to eleven million inhabitants live on the 132.160 square kilometres, which are blessed by a temperate climate under the blue sky of the Mediterranean.

Five thousand years of dramatic history have left their indelible imprint, rivalling nature in its diversity, from the Minoan palaces, Mycenaean fortresses, classical temples, Hellenistic tombs, Roman towns, Byzantine churches, Crusader castles, Turkish mosques and the picturesque villages of the distinctive island architecture to the pleasing modernity of the main cities, spas and summer resorts.

Each region displays a characteristic brand of natural and artistic features, which, nevertheless, only serve to emphasise the unity of Europe's oldest culture, the cradle of western civilisation. No wonder that a people looking back on such a glorious past has preserved in its purest and most welcome form the traditional hospitality towards all strangers visiting their lovely country.

Between 4.000 and 3.000 B.C. the Minoans settled in the southern island of Crete, with 3.327 square miles Greece's largest, and founded one of the most brilliant and sophisticated civilisations of antiquity, and Europe's first. Mythology and history blend in the Priest -King Minos, the legendary son of Zeus, ruler of the Olympian gods, and Europa, the lovely princess after whom the continent is named.

From his splendid palace at Knossos, successive Minos ruled the world's first naval empire, which was destroyed by the eruption of the island volcano of Thira, a Cretan colony, in about 1450 B.C. According to some archaeologists this was the lost island of Atlantis, and the recent discovery of a whole town under 160 feet of lava and pumice lends credibility to this theory.

History then shifts to the mainland, where for a thousand years Hellenic tribes, Pelasgians, Achaeans, Aeolians and Ionians had infiltrated from the north, subdued the native Celts and established numerous small principalities following the country's natural division by impassable mountain ranges.

In the eighth century B.C. the great epic poet Homer was to immortalise the Mycenaean age in the Iliad and Odyssey, the story of the Trojan War fought by Achilles, Odysseus and countless other heroes under the leadership of the High King Agamemnon to bring back the beautiful Helen,

wife of King Menelaus of Sparta. Long believed to be nothing but poetic fantasy, the German amateur archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann vindicated Homer's historical accuracy by following the poets geographical indications to the letter to unearth in the 1870s the palaces and towns of the epic cycle.

In about 1100B.C. the magnificent Bronze Age civilisation of the Mycenaeans tour fell to the iron weapons of a pew invader from the north, the blond, blue-eyed Dorians. Warlike feudal kingdoms emerged from the Dark Ages at the dawn of recorded history in the ninth century B.C. and in the following six-hundred years the Greeks tried and often invented every political system the human mind has as yet conceived. As a tribute to their experimentations, most forms of government still bear the Greek name indicative of their origin.
Tribal, feudal, absolute and constitutional monarchy, landed and commercial oligarchy, Spartan racism followed by a short spell of communism,

dictatorships of all kinds, democracy where the active participation of all citizens was possible due to slavery, decline into demagogy which made the anachronistic city states an easy prey to the unified Macedonian kingdom of Philip, who laid the foundations on which his son Alexander the Greatcould build his world empire.

The great names in this period are Lycurgus, who imposed a totalitarian way of life on Sparta in the eighth century B.C.; Dracon and Solon, the latter one of the Seven Wise of Antiquity, who brought law and order to Athens in the two subsequent centuries; Miltiades, who defeated the Persians at Marathon in 490 B.C.in one of the decisive battles in the eternal struggle between Europe and Asia; Themistocles, who brought this struggle to a victorious climax at the battle of Salamis 10 years later, by the use of seapower which assured Athens of mastery in the Aegean for the entire fifth century B.C. Yet like his predecessor Miltiades, who had died in prison, he fell a victim to the jealousy of his ungrateful Athenian compatriots, who not only ostracised him -exile for ten years without any accusation and thus no means of defence -but eventually condemned him to death, so that the saviour of Greece had to seek refuge at the court of the Persian king he had so brilliantly defeated; and Pausanias, the Spartan regent who finally drove the Persians from Greek soil in the battle of Plataea in 479 B.C., but succumbed to Persian bribes and was stoned to death, his mother reputedly throwing the first stone.

The billiant generalship of Kimon extended the Athenian empire along the shores of Asia Minor, so that when he in his turn was ostracised in 461 B.C., Pericles presided over the Golden Age of unparalleled intellectual and artistic achievements coinciding with a political decline, almost imperceptible at first, but leading to the outbreak of the disastrous Peloponnesian War (431-404 B. C.) in which the personification of Greek virtues and vices, Alcibiades, played the leading part.

The year of Athens' final defeat and humiliation also witnessed his murder.

Spartan dominance was challenged in the next century by the military genius of Epaminondas, who briefly established Theban supremacy by introducing a new fighting force, the phalanx, which was perfected by Philip of Macedonia and assured his victory over the for once united Greek city states at Chaeronea in 338 B.C. Philip generously forgave his main opponent, the Athenian orator Demosthenes, who yet succeeded in persuading the Greeks to another stand against the Macedonians after Philip's murder two years later.

Young Alexander, who ruthlessly destroyed Thebes but spared Athens for its cultural prestige, swiftly crushed the insurrection. He forced the reluctant Greek states to follow him in his expedition into Persia and in 334 B.C. he crossed the Hellespont at the head of a mere 40.000 men to the greatest conquest the world had ever seen. In eleven years of unbroken victories, Alexander founded an empire that stretched from the Ionian Sea to beyond the Indus, and from the Upper Nile to the Caspian Sea. But the centre of gravity had shifted from Macedonia to Babylon, where Alexander died in 323 B.C., having failed in welding Greeks and Persians into a new imperial master race.

In the deadly struggle for the succession, Demetrius Poliorcetes (Besieger of Towns) lost Asia but gained the Greek-Macedonian kingdom, over which the Antigonid dynasty ruled precariously till the Roman conquest in 146 B.C. Yet Greece achieved a remarkable cultural conquest-in-reverse, and the Roman empire became impregnated with the higher art and thought of Greece, to which the Roman aristocracy sent its sons for education in the schools of Athens and Rhodes.

In exchange the Romans used Greece as the battleground for the momentous civil wars of the first century B.C. In 48 B.C. Julius Caesar at Pharsala in Thessaly crushingly defeated Pompey's numerically superior army. In 42 B.C. Brutus kept his fatal appointment with Caesar's ghost at Philippi in Macedonia, where Brutus and Cassius committed suicide, while Mark Antony and Octavian divided the world in preparation for the final round. That came in 31 B.C. at the naval battle of Actium, where Cleopatra precipitate Mark Antony into unreasonable flight and another double suicide, leaving Octavian sole ruler and at last able to establish the Pax Romana for some four hundred years.

The Roman emperors varied in the treatment of their most precious province from Nero, who shipped priceless statues by the hundred to Italy, to fladrian, who munificently embellished the venerable centres of culture. Roman tourists flocked to the famous sites, so not quite in the same numbers as today.
In the partition of the Roman Empire in the fourth century A.D., Greece was allotted to the Eastern Empire. The new capital, Constantinople, was adorned with the spoils from Greece, while pious Byzantine emperors closed the pagan universities and temples. Successive waves of barbaric tribes, Goths, Huns, Vandals and Avars ravaged the country with fire and sword, joined by Saracen pirates, bringing in their wake Slav settlers who threatened to engulf the mainland till Vasilios the Bulgar-Slayer decisively stopped the flood.
After the conquest of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade in 1204, feudalism returned to the country, which had experienced an earlier version in Mycenaean times. Under the nominal suzerainty of the Latin emperor, the Frankish lords were fighting each other as much as the renascent Byzantines, Bulgarians, Serbs, Catalan mercenaries and soon the advance guard of the Turks. The dying Byzantine empire achieved a final but hollow triumph with the reconquest of the Peloponnese in 1430, where two brothers of the last emperor ruled for another six years after his death in the defence of his capital. But in 1460 they were driven out by Sultan Mohammed II, who replaced the Frankish and Byzantine nobles with Turkish veterans. The Greek peasants remained serfs, paying besides tithes a poll-tax and a blood tribute of a fifth of their male children, who were brought up as Moslems and enrolled in the corps of Janissaries, the military elite of the Turkish armies. The frequent incursions and temporary occupation by the Venetians only worsened the lot. of the wretched inhabitants, whose only protector was their recognised representative, the Patriarch of Constantinople, while the bishops provided local guidance and the parochial clergy the little education there was.

In their decline the Turks became only interested in the collection of tribute, while the country was reduced to a state of anarchy, from which a military adventurer, Ali Pasha, was able to carve, by unscrupulous treachery and merciless cruelty, a private principality centred on Epirus, where he was visited by Lord Byron. After forty years he was finally reduced by the Turks, but not before the Greek War of Independence had started in 1821.
On the 25th of March, the feast of the Annunciation, the Archbishop of Patras proclaimed Greek independence at the Monastery of Aghia Lavra in the Peloponnese. The Turks retaliated with the massacres of Greeks on Chios, in Macedonia and Constantinople, where the Patriarch was hanged on Easter Sunday.

Lord Byron

The heroic expoits of the Greeks inspired numerous Philhellenic volunteers, especially British, among them Lord Byron who died in Messologi. The intervention by an Egyptian army and fleet in support of the Turks led in 1825 to the formation of a Triple Alliance of Great Britain, France and Russia, whose navy decisively defeated the Turco-Egyptian force at Navarino two years later. The Protocol of London in 1832 established the frontier of the reborn Greek state, first a republic under the Corfiote nobleman Capodistria, who had for a time been the Czar's foreign minister, and after his murder as a kingdom under the young Bavarian Prince, Otto. After a bloodless revolution in 1843, which culminated in the proclamation of a liberal constitution, Otto was forced to abdicate in 1863.

An overwhelming majority voted to offer the vacant throne to Queen Victoria's second son, the Duke of Edinburgh. But the dynasties of the three Protecting Powers were excluded, and the acceptance of their joint choice, Prince George of Denmark, was made popular by the session of the Ionian Islands by Great Britain to Greece. 1n 1881 Thessaly was incorporated in the Kingdom of the Hellenes, but the Cretan uprising in 1897 led to an unsuccessful war with Turkey and in the following year to the granting of full autonomy to Crete under purely nominal Turkish suzerainty.

The two Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913 almost doubled Greece's territory and population, but in the interval King George I was murdered in the newly conquered Thessalonica. His son and heir, King Constantine lacked his father's political foresight; having received his military training in Germany he believed in the final victory of the German Emperor William II, whose sister he had married. The Allies intervened and forced King Constantine to leave the country where his second son, Alexander, became king.

In 1920 he died of blood-poisoning from a monkey bite, and by another of the many plebiscites King Constantine was recalled. After a disastrous war with the resurgent Turks in Asia Minor, in defence of the vast gains made by the Treaty of Sevres, Greece had to resign itself to the frontier of the Evros river in Thrace and an unprecedented exchange of populations, 1,500.000 Greeks against 370.000 Turks, which burdened the small country tremendous social and economic problems. Kind Constantine abdicated now in favour of his eldest son, who briefly ruled as George II before the proclamation of a republic in 1924. But the King was recalled by another plebiscite in 1935, only to leave the country again in 1941 after a heroic resistance against the Italians and Germans.

Returning as the result of the plebiscite of 1946, in the lull between two, Communist rebellions, George II died the following year, before the end of the Civil War in 1949 in the reign of his brother, King Paul, who was succeed in 1964 by his son, King Constantine.

Continual cabinet crises led to the military Revolution of the 21st April 1967 and in December of the same year the King left the country.
The military regime in Athens resigned July 23, 1974. Former President Caramanlis returned to Athens and was sworn in as Premier of Greece's first civilian government since 1967. Since 1981 Greece is an E.U. member country. So long and varied a history naturally left splendid architectural and artistic remains scattered al lover the country.

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