Parthenon and the Acropolis
General Description
The Parthenon is the remains of the temple to the Greek goddess Athena, goddess over the entire ancient city of Athens, and by far the most famous structure still existing in Ancient Greece. The temple was built to honor Athena, and to show gratitude for the recovery of Athens to Greece during the time of the Persian Wars. The temple has been a part of the Greek culture for over 2,500 years. As such beauty should never be gone or forgotten.
Architectural Design
The style of the Parthenon is traditional in the time of its creation, designed by a famous sculptor named, Phidas, at the request of Pericles. Pericles was a Greek politician that is credited with starting the "Golden Age of Greece." However, the construction of the temple was supervised by two Greek architects, Iktinos, and Kallikrates. It was built using the Doric-Style. The Doric is best known for its plain, un-embellished style, distinguished and more recognizable by its basic columns. The Parthenon is built of forty-six columns, with most of the stone coming from Mount Pentelicus, which is about 10 miles from Athens. The columns themselves are wider at the bottom and progressively get smaller at the top. However, the corner columns are slightly larger, giving the illusion that the columns within the structure are straight. On top of the columns, the area called the metopes display the battles of Amazons, Centaurs, Giants, and the Greeks. The building of the temple occurred during 447 - 438 BC; but some of the decorations were completed later. The exact measurements of the temple are still in the air, but the best and most familiar measurements that have been given are about 30.9 meters by 69.5 meters.
Harmony with Nature
The Greeks inherited and industrialized an eye for certain surprisingly specific combination's of landscape features as meaningful of particular holiness. This came about because of a religious tradition in which land was not a picture but a true force which physically incarnate the powers that ruled the world. The place it's self holy and before the temple was built upon it personified the whole of the deity as a recognized natural force. With the coming of the temple, housing its image within it and itself developed as a sculptural epithet of the god's presence and character. There for, the formal elements of any Greek sanctuary are, first, the specifically sacred landscapes in which it is set upon.
Symbolism and Sacred Objects
The temple was sacred to two different aspects of the Greek goddess Athena, and Athena Parthenos (young maiden). The "on" ending means "place of", so Parthenon being the "Place of the Parthenos". Inside of the Parthenon stood a bronze statue of Athena, which originally stood in the center of the temple but was taken by a Roman emperor and destroyed. There is also a triangular area above the columns called pediments, which house a display of Athena's birth on the eastern corner and on the western side one of Athena's battle with Posiden, and again on the northern side with depictions of the Trojan War.
How it was used by Worshipers
The Parthenon was used for the worship of Athena (Pathenos), the "Virgin Athena." It was the most important temple in ancient Greek religion of almost a thousand years. Around the 5th century AD the temple was turned into a Christian Church devoted to the Virgin Mary, but once considered to be the house of the Franks and later of the Turks. After so, once again the Parthenon was once again converted into a Mosque in 1460. Until 1687, when gun powder stored by the Turks inside the temple exploded and destroyed the central area, and again in 1801-1803 when much of the remaining sculpture was sold by the Turks, and finally ended up in the British Museum.
Sources:
Web. April 10, 2009
http://academic.reed.edu/humanities/110Tech/Parthenon.html
Web. April 10, 2009
http://ancient-greece.org/architecture/parthenon.html
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