The Acropolis of Athens Explained

The Athenian Acropolis must have been one of the best natural fortresses of the ancient world. It rises some 91 meters at its highest point, and it's surrounded by steep cliffs on all sides except the west, where there is an accessible slope from which the ancient Athenians used to ascend. During the 5th century BC, the city of Athens flourished into its golden age under the rule of Pericles, who was a great general and a skilled orator. This period marked a time of peace between the Persian and the Peloponnesian Wars, allowing the city to focus on other important things like philosophy, art and architecture. As a result, most of the iconic buildings that characterize the Acropolis were constructed during Pericles' era. As you ascend the hill, perched picturesquely in the southwestern spur of the Acropolis rock, the first building you encounter is the Temple of Athena Nike, which sits on top of this platform. And the purpose of the platform is to register the line of the top of the Acropolis at the bottom of the flight of stairs. The temple has two facades, one towards the temple complex and one towards the city. Its size is so small that the temple had to be amphiprostile, meaning that it has columns only on its front and back. Its name, Athena Nike, means Athena the Victorious, and it was built to commemorate the victory of the Athenians over the Persians. Since the Acropolis was a sacred site, to access the precinct, they needed to mark a transition from the secular, profane world to the sacred one. And to do so, they created this building called the Propylaia. If you look at its elevation, it looks like a Doric temple, but it's not a temple, you just proceed through it. It acts as a gate to the complex. The central intercolumniation is wider than the rest, accommodating the processional way that used to pass through it. That's why you see two unsupported triglyphs over the central space instead of the usual one, as the architect had to take liberties with the exacting Doric. And as the gate moves up the hill, it begins to change its scale, making adjustments for topography, but also making adjustments for different hierarchical engagements that it's making, so that when it gets to the top of the hill, all of this irregularity and looseness of form that it has, congeals and becomes a much more orderly form, decorous, appropriate to the meaning of a temple complex. So there are three pairs of Ionic columns lining the passageway, because the rising ground level and scale of the space dictated the choice of a more slender order, and a second Doric portico terminated the central section on the opposite side. Crossing the Propylaia compacts the space around you, denying the visibility of the buildings inside and only giving you glimpses of them, making the arrival more rewarding. And when you pass it, this is the view you get. This is what Greek architecture does. This is the oblique view of the buildings, showing us how they flex and how they lock into the site. There are three main objects that clarify themselves in the composition. The colossal statue of Athena in the center, the Parthenon to the right, and the Erechtheion to the left. The statue of Athena Promachos was a bronze statue with an estimated height of around 9 meters, and its location allowed the statue to be visible from a distance, serving as a symbol of the city's strength and Athena's protection. The name Athena Promachos means Athena who fights in the front line. The Erechtheion to the left is one of the most interesting amongst the buildings on top of the Acropolis. And that's because, in comparison with most of the Greek buildings, which are so symmetric and perfectly proportioned, the Erechtheion is so irregular. It looks like a collection of little buildings that happen to be adjacent to one another, rather than one building. And that has to do with its architectural program and with the mythological inhabitation of the site. According to the myth, back when Athens was being established as a city, the Athenians were in need of a patron deity to protect and bless their city. Two powerful Olympian gods, Athena and Poseidon, both expressed their interest in becoming the city's protector. And in order to determine which deity deserved this honor, a contest was proposed. Each deity was tasked with presenting a gift that would demonstrate their worthiness and benefit to the city. Poseidon, the god of the sea and earthquakes, struck the ground with his mighty trident. As a result, a spring of water emerged from the earth. However, the water was salty and not suitable for the people's needs. Athena, the goddess of wisdom, warfare and crafts, then stepped forward. She planted an olive tree, which rapidly grew and flourished. The olive tree held great significance as a symbol of peace, prosperity and wisdom. The people found this gift more valuable as it provided them with food, oil and wood. So, they chose her as their patron goddess and named the city Athens in her honor. And thus, the eastern portion of the Erechtheion, being the most important and having the main facade, was appropriated to the shrine of Athena Polias, which means Athena, guardian of the city. And the western portion to the shrines of Erechtheus, the founder and first king of Athens, from whom the building takes its name, and Poseidon. So, programmatically, it's a hybrid temple. And there's also a salt water well inside of the temple and a hole in the roof that represent the spot where Poseidon struck the earth with his trident. An Athena's olive tree on the western side of the building. The building is hybrid for other reasons too and it has to do with negotiating the difficulties of the site. One side faces the high ground while the other side faces the low ground. So, this facade would be seen from this distance, while this facade would be seen from all over Athens. This is the facade of the Poseidon shrine that engages the city. It enlarges its scale so it can be seen from far away. And it shrinks its scale because it's seen from a near distance, but it also wants to clarify the hierarchies of the site. And the Parthenon is a major temple, so this little porch shrinks down and becomes tiny, so that you can understand very clearly that the Parthenon is a major temple. These female figures serving as columns that support the Erechtheion are called Cariatids, which in Greek means Maidens of Cariae, an ancient town near Sparta, and they were condemned to slavery after betraying Athens in the Persian Wars. Vitruvius, an ancient Roman architect, describes the Greek columns as if they were anthropomorphic, that is, they're shaped as humans. The capital is the head, the shaft is the body, and the base represents the feet. And look at the folds of drapery in the Cariatid. It looks a lot like the fluting on the column, or this fabric-like drapery between the volutes. They are truly spectacular and delicate, and it's really beautiful how most of this big wall facing the Parthenon is a plain masonry wall, allowing it to become edge, deflecting towards this little object that through its scale differs to the Parthenon, but through its intricacy holds its own. The Parthenon is the canon for Greek temples. The temple follows a peripteral design, meaning that it's surrounded by columns on all sides. And because it's surrounded by columns on all sides, the building begs to be viewed in the round. And the same is true for all Greek buildings. As you enter the Acropolis, you see the buildings in an oblique perspective. Unlike Egyptian or Roman architecture, Greek architecture is not ordered in an orthogonal manner, with axes and parallel lines. Greek architecture is organized based on spatial viewpoints, that is, places from which it can be viewed. The buildings arrange themselves in such a way as to be viewed obliquely, as fully plastic objects that help us see and understand the landscape beyond. Although the Parthenon is the masterpiece of Doric architecture, it is octa-style, meaning that it has 8 columns on its front and back facades, something unusual for a Doric temple since most of them used to be hexa-style, with 6 columns. It had 17 columns on each side, so like any classical Greek temple, the sides of the Parthenon have a central column, so that your eye doesn't know where to rest when looking at the side, so it quickly finds the front of the temple since it is viewed in the round. The front has a clear centerline on the doors, making for a harmonious composition that clearly directs the eye. The building is placed on a platform of 3 steps called stylobate. The dimensions of the top step are of 69.54 m by 30.88 m, giving us a relation of 4 to 9, meaning that you can perfectly fit 36 squares in the space of the Parthenon. Each of the steps measures half a meter in height, and since they were too steep to ascend with comfort, intermediate steps were provided at the center of the east and west ends. The Parthenon was also very important because there was no Greek building in antiquity that was so decorated as the Parthenon. No building had this much detail in sculpture, in painting, so this is a jewel that we get to see today. It was very detailed, it was very big, and it was all made of marble, so the material is also very impressive to look at, especially back in the day it used to be whiter, nowadays it's a little more yellowish, but it used to be white, so the view from far away, being on top of the mountain, it would have been impressive and it would have reflected the sun and it would be very bright. It was built using white marble brought from the Pentelicus, a nearby mountain, and it was covered with marble roof tiles brought from the island of Paros. The original marble statues of the Parthenon are now located in the British Museum in London, but in Nashville, Tennessee, which is where I'm right now, you can see behind me a full-scale reproduction of the Parthenon with all of its statues and all of its original colors. This place can give you a better idea of what the Parthenon would have looked like in ancient times. This full-scale replica was built in 1897 for an international exposition to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Tennessee's entry into the United States. And even though the original Parthenon was made of marble and this is made of concrete, you can get a sense of the interior quality of the space of the Parthenon with this building, because every single proportion, every single size, every single measurement was respected when this building was made. Many refinements in designing the temples were made by the Greeks in order to correct optical illusions. The long lines of the architrave, stylobate pediments, and other features would appear to sag or drop in the middle of their length if they were built straight, so they were formed with slight convex lines. For instance, in the Parthenon, the stylobate has an upward curvature towards its center on each side. The vertical features were made to incline inwards in order to correct their tendency of appearing to fall outwards at the top. Thus, in the Parthenon, the axes of the outer columns lean inwards 67 millimeters and they would meet if extended at a distance of a mile above ground. Barely noticeable, but these little adjustments create a balance and a visual harmony that manage to conceal all the imperfections that our eyes perceive. The column shafts swell at the bottom and then diminish at the top. This change in diameter is called entasis, and its purpose is to achieve a more natural and pleasing visual effect, reducing the sense of rigidity that completely straight columns might give, almost looking like a muscle bulging and expressing the physical load sustained by the column. This drawing exaggerates all of these distortions so that you can better understand how all the straight lines of the Parthenon aren't actually straight. All these optical corrections were, of course, respected when they built the replica in Nashville. Now, as I mentioned, most of the original sculpture of the Parthenon were taken by the English, and it's only possible to appreciate the original aspect of the Parthenon if you go to Nashville. The East pediment, the one above the main entrance, represents the birth of Athena, who sprang as a fully grown warrior from the head of her father Zeus. There's a statue of Nike, the goddess of victory, flying to place the victor's wrath on Athena's helmet, thus commemorating Greece's recent defeat of the Persians and making the Parthenon an offering of thanks to their patron goddess. And the West pediment is a representation of the contest between Athena and Poseidon to determine who would be the patron of Athens. Both pediments have freestanding statues with incredible plasticity. You can even see how some of them appear to lean out of a triangular frame, creating a remarkable three-dimensional depth. Above the columns, there was a set of 96 triglyphs and 92 metapieces. The metapieces were square pieces of marble with a high relief scene, usually with two figures. There's one theme per side of the building, each one representing the Greeks fighting against a different civilization. Those on the eastern facade depict contests between gods and giants, on the western, between Greeks and Amazons, on the southern, between centaurs and lapiths, and on the northern, scenes from the siege of Troy. You can see a small hole below each metapie on the eastern and western fronts. They would support bronze shields presented by Alexander the Great in 334 BC, with dedicatory inscriptions between and bronze letters. There's another frieze in the Parthenon. This one's a continuous sculpted band that used to encircle the entire inner walls of the colonnade. It portrays in bar relief the Panathenaic Procession, a grand event held every four years in Athens to honor the goddess Athena. This procession included Athenian citizens, dignitaries, musicians, and priests who would carry various offerings and artifacts to be presented at the Parthenon. All of these can be seen up close in the Acropolis Museum, although most of them are plaster copies since the originals are in the British Museum of London, along with half of the Acropolis. On the east, the front side of the building had a portico called Pronaus, with a huge bronze door that led into the inner chamber, the Naus. This 19-meter chamber was divided into a nave and aisles by two rows of 10 Doric columns with three columns at the western end, so making the aisle continuous round three sides of the Naus. These columns supported an upper row of smaller Doric columns carrying the roof timbers and forming the side aisles into heights. Near the western end was the famous statue of Athena Parthenos, or Athena the Virgin, representing Athena fully armed with spear, helmet, aegis, and shield, supporting a winged victory or Nike on her right hand. This was a chryselephantine statue from the Greek χρυσός, gold, and ivory, about 12 meters in height including the pedestal, and it was constructed on a wooden core. The gold plates of which it was partly composed were detachable and could be removed in case of danger. The face, hands, and feet were of ivory, but the drapery, armor, and accessories were of solid gold, and precious stones were inserted for the eyes. The statue didn't survive the Middle Ages, but this one that I'm showing you is the reproduction inside Nashville's Parthenon. So this is what the interior of the Parthenon would have looked like in the 5th century BC, with a huge statue of the goddess Athena. The smaller chamber on the opposite side is the Parthenon proper from which the whole temple took its name. Parthenon means the Virgin's Chamber, and it was used as a hieratic treasury. Due to its smaller dimensions and considerable height, using Doric columns would have required oversized proportions, taking up a significant amount of space, so it was instead supported by four Ionic columns. This chamber was accessed from the opisthodomos, the portico on the back side of the building. These chambers were enclosed by walls about 1.21 meters thick, and on the outside, encircling the building, was an ambulatory of 2.74 meters wide on the sides and 3.25 meters in the front and rear. The pronaos and opisthodomos had six columns on front forming a portico on an upper stylobate of two steps. These were both used as treasure stores, and metal grilles extending from the floor to the roof were fixed between the columns in order to make them secure. The Parthenon is probably the best example of the application of the golden ratio in architecture. The architects must have had a great knowledge of geometry to be able to create this building. Just look at how many projection lines I have to make in order to draw the facade. Every single part has a geometric relation to one another, and you can find golden rectangles all over. Nevertheless, Greek architects didn't draw detailed architectural drawings like this. They used simple tools like ropes, measuring rods, and plumb lines to establish the building's dimensions, alignments, and geometric relationships. And they did all of this directly on the site. We know the names of the architects of the Acropolis. The Temple of Athena Nike was made by Calicrates, the Propylaea and the Erechtheion were made by Nesiquis, and the Parthenon was made by Ictinus and Calicrates. The construction of the entire Acropolis complex was coordinated and supervised by the great sculptor Phidias, and he was responsible for the sculptural detail on the Parthenon, including the friezes and pediments, and the large cult statue of Athena Parthenos. And although the official architects of the Parthenon were Ictinus and Calicrates, Phidias was responsible for the way the Parthenon looks, its proportions, its dimensions. His statue of Athena was made for the Temple, and the Temple was made for the statue, as the size of the interior is perfectly proportioned to house this 12-meter-high sculpture. Phidias made the Parthenon. There were other minor buildings on top of the Acropolis, mostly treasuries, altars, and minor sanctuaries to other gods. The overall layout of the Acropolis was designed to enhance the sense of procession. A visitor would first emerge from the eastern portico of the Propylaea to see the great statue of Athena Promachos just left to the center, balancing the majestic Parthenon, which rose further back in the right-hand side. It was the intention of the architects of the Acropolis that visitors should first view the Parthenon at an angle, where the west facade and the north colonnade presented the essence of the Temple's volume at a single glance. One reached the sanctuary entrance by traversing a rising pathway running the length of the Parthenon's north side, passing the exposed foundations of the old Temple of Athena that was destroyed by the Persians on the left and turning south around the corner to ascend the steps into the eastern portico. Only after experiencing the totality of the Temple exterior would the drama of the interior be unfolded. The Parthenon has been a great influence in history. Thanks to it, the Greek temple type has endured to our days, because its form alone symbolizes things that we associate with the grandeur of Greece, like the birthplace of the democracy, or the birthplace of high cultural institutions, a place where architecture and art and theater came into their own, a place where philosophy flourished. And so it's not surprising that we see banks formed like temples, or academic buildings with temple pediments, or churches, or government buildings that were inspired on classical architecture. But the Parthenon's legacy is not limited to its physical remains. It is also a reminder that our creations too have the power to inspire, to transcend time, and to speak to the hearts of the generations yet to come. The Acropolis was the most sacred part of the city, but there was so much more to Athens in antiquity. So if you want to better understand the city as a whole, then I recommend you watching my video explaining Athens. I hope you enjoyed and learned from this. Please leave a like, because it helps me a lot, and subscribe to my channel. Thank you for watching, and I'll see you very soon in the next episode. Goodbye!