What is parthenon

Its massive foundations were made of limestone, and the columns were made of Pentelic marble, a material that was utilized for the first time.

The classicalParthenon was constructed between BCE to be the focus of the Acropolis building complex. The architects were Iktinos and Kallikrates Vitruvius also names Karpion as an architect and it was dedicated to the goddess Athena Pallas or Parthenos virgin. The temple and the chryselephantine statue were dedicated in , although work on the sculptures of its pediment continued until completion in BCE.

The Parthenon construction cost the Athenian treasury silver talents. While it is almost impossible to create a modern equivalent for this amount of money, it might be useful to look at some facts. One talent was the cost to build one trireme, the most advanced warship of the era. Kagan, The Peloponnesian War, According to Kagan, Athens at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war had triremes in service, while the annual gross income of the city of Athens at the time of Perikles was talents, with another in reserve at its treasury.

This ratio governed the vertical and horizontal proportions of the temple as well as many other relationships of the building like the spacing between the columns and their height. The cella was unusually large to accommodate the oversized statue of Athena, confining the front and back porch to a much smaller than usual size. The decision by the Athenians in BC to move the League treasury from the Panhellenic sanctuary at Delos to the Athenian acropolis points in the same direction.

Because the Parthenon was built with League funds, the building may be read as an expression of the confidence of the Athenians in this newly naked imperialism. But the piety of this undertaking should not be underestimated; the Persians had sacked the temples on the Athenian acropolis in , and rebuilding them fulfilled, in Bury's words, the Athenians' "debt of gratitude to heaven for the defeat of the Mede.

The Parthenon is a Doric peripteral temple, which means that it consists of a rectangular floor plan with a series of low steps on every side, and a colonnade 8 x 17 of Doric columns extending around the periphery of the entire structure.

Each entrance has an additional six columns in front of it. The larger of the two interior rooms, the naos, housed the cult statue. The smaller room the opisthodomos was used as a treasury. Here is a plan of the temple:. It was built to replace two earlier temples of Athena on the Acropolis. One of these, of which almost no trace remains today, stood south of the Parthenon between the Parthenon and the Erechtheum.

The other, which was still being built at the time of the Persian sack in , was on the same spot as the Parthenon. We know the names of the architects Iktinos and Kallikrates and also of the sculptor Pheidias who made the massive chryselephantine cult statue of the goddess.

The three main types of columns used in Greek temples and other public buildings are Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian. The truest and most basic difference among the orders has to do with proportions Doric columns, for example, being thicker and shorter, Ionic columns taller and slimmer.

As a shortcut, the orders may be distinguished most easily by their capitals the tops of the columns. As you can see from the following examples, the Doric capital has the simplest design; the Ionic has the curlicues called volutes, and the Corinthian has the acanthus leaves:.

The metopes on the West side depict Amazonomachy, a mythical battle between the Amazons and the Ancient Greeks, and were thought to be designed by the sculptor Kalamis. The metopes on the East side show Gigantomachy, mythical battles between gods and Giants.

Most metopes on the South side show Centauromachy, the battle of mythical centaurs with the Lapiths, and the metopes on the North side portray the Trojan War. The frieze was carved using the bas-relief technique, which means the sculpted figures are raised slightly from the background. Historians believe the frieze depicted either the Panathenaic procession to the Acropolis or the sacrifice of Pandora to Athena.

There are two sculpted, triangular-shaped gables known as pediments on each end of the Parthenon. The West pediment showed the conflict between Athena and Poseidon to claim Attica, an ancient region of Greece which included the city of Athens. A shrine within the Parthenon housed an extraordinary statue of Athena, known as Athena Parthenos, which was sculpted by Phidias. The statue no longer exists but is thought to have stood 12 meters high 39 feet. It was carved of wood and covered in ivory and gold.

Historians know what the statue looked like thanks to surviving Roman reproductions. The Athena statue depicted a fully-armed woman wearing a goatskin shield known as an aegis. She held a six-foot tall statue of the Greek goddess Nike in her right hand and a shield in her left hand that illustrated various battle scenes.

Two griffins and a sphinx stood on her helmet and a large snake behind her shield. It was undoubtedly an awe-inspiring sight for anyone who gazed upon it. In the sixth century A. They outlawed pagan worship of the Greek gods and converted the Parthenon to a Christian church.

They blocked the East side entrance and, following the custom of Christianity , forced worshipers to enter the church on the West side. The massive statue of Athena was gone before the Byzantines arrived. The Parthenon remained a Christian church until A. The Ottoman Turks converted the Parthenon into a mosque, yet kept many Christian paintings and artifacts intact. In , facing attack from the Christian Holy League, the Ottomans converted the Parthenon into an ammunitions depot and shelter, but it was anything but safe.

The structure was bombarded with cannonballs and its ammunition stores exploded causing hundreds of deaths and massive structural damage.

In the early 19th century, Thomas Bruce, the 7th Earl of Elgin, removed the marble friezes and several other sculptures and shipped them to London, England where they remain on public display in the British Museum today. After centuries of being ruled by the Turks, the Greeks fought for independence in the s. The Acropolis became a combat zone and the Turkish Army removed hundreds of marble blocks from Parthenon ruins. They also used the lead-coated iron clamps which held the blocks together to make bullets.

They appointed an archaeological committee called the Acropolis Restoration Project. With Greek architect Manolis Korres at its helm, the committee painstakingly charted every relic in the ruins and used computer technology to identify their original location. The restoration team plans to supplement original Parthenon artifacts with modern materials that are weather-resistant and corrosion-resistant and that help support the integrity of the structure.

Where needed, new marble from the quarry where the original marble was obtained will be used. Still, the Parthenon will not be restored to its original glory. Instead, it will stay a partial ruin and will feature design elements and artifacts that reflect its rich, diverse history.

Renovations are ongoing at the Parthenon and the entire Acropolis; however, tourists can still visit the historical site.