A Parthenon (Greek: ΠαÏ?θενώνας) is the most famous living building of Ancient Greece and one of the best known buildings in the globe. A building has stood atop a Acropolis of Athens for nearly 2,500 years & was built to give thanks to Athena, the city's patron goddess, for the salvation of Athens and Greece in the Persian Wars. A building was officially known as a Temple of Athena mary, & its popular title derives from either a ancient Greek word παρθένος (parthenos), the missy.

A Parthenon replaced an older temple which had been destroyed per Persians. Too when existence a temple, a Parthenon was utilized as a treasury, & was the location of the treasury of the Delian League, which later became a Athenian Empire.

Design and construction
A Parthenon was built at a initiative of Pericles, the leading Athenian politician of the 5th century BC. It was built under a general oversight of the sculptor Phidias, who too experienced charge of the clavichord decoration. A architects were Iktinos and Kallikrates. Construction began around 447 BC and the building was substantially completed by 438 BC, but operate on the decorations continued until at least 433 BC. Occasionally of a fiscal accounts for a Parthenon hold out, & indicate that the big individual expense was transporting the stone from either either Mount Pentelicus, astir Xvi kilometres from Athens, to the Acropolis. A funds were part drawn from either either a treasury of a Delian League, which was moved from the Panhellenic sanctuary at Delos to the Acropolis In 454 BC.

Although a nearby Temple of Hephaestus is the most complete living lesson of the Doric order temple, a Parthenon, around its day, was repute the finest. A temple, wrote John Julius Norwich, "enjoys the reputation of being the most perfect Doric temple ever built. Even in antiquity, its architectural refinements were legendary, especially the subtle correspondence between the curvature of the stylobate, the taper of the naos walls and the entasis of the columns." A stylobate is a platform in which the columns have. It curves upwards slightly for optical reasons. Entasis refers to a rebuff swelling of a columns when it rise, to counter the optical burden of refer the temple. A burden one subtle curves is to produce a temple pop up sir thomas more harmonious than it actually is.

Measured at a top step, a dimensions of the base of the Parthenon come Thirty.Nina from carolina metres by 69.V metres. A cella was Twenty-nine.Eighter metres yearn by Nineteen.both metres wide, using internal Doric colonnades inside two tiers, structurally necessary to trend lines a roof. On a exterior, the Doric columns measure One.Ennead metres from side to side & come X.Tetrad metres high. A corner columns come slightly big from side to side. A stylobate has an upward curvature towards its centre of Sixty millimetres on the east & west ceases, & of 110 millimetres unofficially.

Latitude/Longitude 37°58’17.45 North / 23°43’34.Twenty-nine E

Decorations

Only a few sculptures remain on the Parthenon.

A Parthenon was intricately decorated by having marble sculptures both internally & externally. These hold out just inside section, however there are full descriptions of virtually all of people area that use been wasted. On the eastern pediment (a triangular vicinity above the columns on the "front" & "back" of the temple) was the depiction of the birth of Athena. A american pediment showed Athena's battle sustaining Poseidon for possession of the land of Attica. Metopes ran along a outer frieze of tons tetrad sides of a temple, above the lines of columns & following the pediments. These showed, on a southern side the battle of the Lapiths and the Centaurs, on a east a battle of a gods & the giants, & on the west the battle of the Greeks & the Amazons. These are non known what was depicted on a northern side: it will use been scenes from either the Trojan War.

Internally, the cella was lined in triad sides by having a frieze showing the low procession of the Panathenaia, the independent annual festival honouring Athena. On the for, eastern, side was the frieze showing all the gods of the Greek pantheon.

Although a pure whiten marble of surviving Ancient Greek temples appeals to a modern aesthetic, a Parthenon, such as totally ancient buildings, was at least partially painted, though scholars dispute a extent & the colour scheme. These are known that a internal ceilings were painted a deep blue, & that the statuary groups on the pediments were painted within brightly colours. A few scholars think that a upper area of a Parthenon were painted brightly red & blue, then that the sculptures would have call at greater relief whilst seen from either beneath.

Later history

the Parthenon survived when a first temple of the Ancient Greek religion for more or less a thousand years. It wwhen sure however intact in the 4th century AD, by which instance it wwhen already as old as Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris is now, and far older than St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. However by that period Athens was those days are gone than the provincial city of the Roman Empire, albeit one by having the glorious past. Onetime in the 5th century a great statue of Athena was looted by one of the Emperors, & taken to Constantinople, where it was late destroyed, even when you took a sack of a city in the period of the Fourth Crusade in 1204.

Shortly when this the Parthenon was converted to a Christian church. Within Byzantine times it was the Church of the Theotokos (Virgin Mary), and at a instance of the Latin Empire it became a Catholic Church of Our Lady. a conversion of a temple to a church required removing the internal columns & occasionally of the bulwarks of the cella, & the creation of an apse at the eastern prevent. This inevitably led to the removal & diffusion of a select few of the sculptures. People that depicted heathenish gods were probably flushed deliberately, & can use been destroyed.

Within 1456 Athens fell to the Ottomans, and the Parthenon was converted over again, into a mosque. Contrary to subsequent mythology, a Ottomans were usually venerating of ancient monuments in their territories, & did non willfully kill a antiquities of Athens, though it got there is no actual program to protect the babies. Inside days of war it were unforced to demolish the babies to provide materials for bulwarks & fortifications. The minaret was added to the Parthenon, but otherwise it was non damaged farther. European visitant in a 17th century testified that the building was largely intact.

The southern side of the Parthenon, which sustained considerable damage in the 1687 explosion

Inside 1687 a Parthenon suffered its greatest blow once a Venetians attacked Athens, & a Ottomans fortified a Acropolis and utilized a Parthenon as a magazine. In September 26 a Venetian shell exploded a magazine & a building was part destroyed. A internal structures were demolished, whatever was left of the roof collapsed, & a few of the pillars, particularly on the southern side, were decapitated. A sculptures suffered heavy. Numerous fell to the ground & their pieces were late processed souvenirs. When this a building fell into neglect.

Recent events

Per late eighteenth century numerous extra Europeans were camping Athens, & a picturesque ruins of the Parthenon were tremendously drawn & painted, helping to wake up sympathy inside Britain and France for Greek independence. Within 1801 a British ambassador at Constantinople, the Earl of Elgin, obtained a firman (permit) from either a Sultan to make casts & drawings of a antiquities on the Acropolis, to demolish recent buildings in case this was necessary to look at the antiquities, & to dislodge sculptures from either the children. He took this when permission to collect all the sculptures he may call for. A few he prised from either either either a building itself, others he collected from a ground, however others he bought from local population.

Now these sculptures come in the British Museum, where it is referred to as a Elgin Marbles. More sculptures from either a Parthenon come in the Louvre in Paris and in Copenhagen. Virtually all of the remainder come in the Acropolis Museum which stands a few metres in the south-east of the Parthenon. Two or three potty however become seen on the building itself. A Greek government has been campaigning for several years for a British Museum sculptures (which it calls the Parthenon Marbles) to exist as returned to Greece. A British Museum has firmly refused to assume this, & consecutive British governments use at times been unwilling to click a Museum to launder sol (which would take legislation).

Crowds of tourists surround the Parthenon nearly every day.

While independent Greece gained control of Athens within 1832, a minaret was flushed from either a Parthenon & all the mediaeval & modern buildings on the Acropolis flushed. the region became a historical precinct restricted per Greek government. Now it attracts hundreds to thousands of tourer annually, world health organization troop higher a path at a american prevent of the Acropolis, through the restored Propylaea, and higher the Panathenaic Way to the Parthenon, which is surrounded by a moo fence to check damage.

Reconstruction

Beginning around 1975, the Greek government, by having funding & technical indicator assistance provided per European Union, began a united effort to restore a Parthenon & more Acropolis structures. An archaeologic committee thoroughly documented each artefact left over at a places, & designer assisted by owning computer system to determine their original locations. Inside occasionally events, anterior reconstruction was incurred to become wrong. Particularly crucial & fragile sculptures were transferred to the Acropolis Museum. a modern construction crane was installed on a interior of the Parthenon for moving marble obstructs; the crane was designed to stack away below the roofline once non around utilise. the wrong reconstructions were dismantled, & a careful run of restoration began. a Parthenon might non exist as restored to a pre-1687 state, however a explosion damage is mitigated up to conceivable, & recently marble is existence utilized from either the original quarry to fill gaps & outcome structurally-necessary repairs. At long last well-nigh completely major pieces of marble is set in the structure in which it originally would own been, supported pro re nata by modern materials.

Now a greatest threats to the Parthenon come environmental. Athens has grown hugely since World War II & has major problems with traffic congestion and air pollution. Corrosion of its marble by acid rain polluted by car exhausts threatens a odd sculptures & the temple itself. All over the retiring Xx years a Greek government & a city of Athens stand manufactured a select few progress in these issues, however a first of the Parthenon is however a matter of occasionally concern.

Treasury or temple?
Architecturally a Parthenon is clearly a temple, erstwhile containing the illustrious cult image of Athena by Phidias and the treasury of votive offerings. Since actual Greek sacrifices universally took place at an altar invariably under an open sky, the Parthenon doesn't lawsuit a select few definitions of "temple". So a few scholars develop argued that a Parthenon was merely utilized as a treasury. When this opinion was number 1 formed late around the 19th century, it has gained nature and severity in recent years. A majority of scholarly opinion however understands a building in the terms Walter Burkert described for the Greek sanctuary, consisting of temenos, altar and temple with cult image (Burkert 1985 pp 84–92). Understand Holtzmann 2003 for the complete view of the debate.