1. GREEK ARCHITECTURE

2. TOPICS
• Parthenon
• Temple of Poseidon
• Acropolis

3. PARTHENON
•The Parthenon is a former temple on the Athenian
Acropolis, Greece, dedicated to the goddess Athena,
whom the people of Athens considered their patron
• It is the most important surviving building of Classical
Greece, generally considered the zenith of the Doric
order
•To the Athenians who built it, the Parthenon and
other Periclean monuments of the Acropolis were
seen fundamentally as a celebration of Hellenic
victory over the Persian invaders and as a
thanksgiving to the gods for that victory

4. SPECIFICATIONS
•Type: Greek Temple
•Architectural style: Classical
•Location: Athens, Greece
•Construction started: 447 BC
•Completed: 432 BC
•Destroyed: Partly on 26 September 1687
•Height: 13.72 m (45.0 ft)
•Size: 69.5 by 30.9 m (228 by 101 ft)

5. TEMPLE FORM
•The Parthenon is a Doric Temple,
named because of the style/order
of column used in its construction
•A Doric temple has 8 columns on
each end and 17 along each side.
•The Parthenon is 60 meters in
length, 30 meters wide and 18
meters in height.

6. PARTS OF THE TEMPLE
• Cella is The inner, main chamber of a temple. Greek term: Naos.
• This chamber containing the image of the god was the principal part of the temple. Generally
the cella received its light through the open door alone, but sometimes there was also an
opening in the roof or possibly windows on either side of the door.
•In the Greek temple, the porch, portico, or entrance-hall to the temple proper or cella. Greek
term: Pronaos
•There is a porch at the rear of the cella which often served as a rear entrance. Greek term:
Opisthodomos

7. PLAN OF THE PARTHENON

8. •The cella on the west was dedicated to Athena Parthenos,
from which the whole building got the name Parthenon. It’s
likely that the western cella was used as a treasury
•The cella is surrounded by a series of columns, called a
colonnade; at each end it also has an additional set of columns
between the outside colonnade and the cella.

9. TECHNICAL TERMS

10. TEMPLE OF POSEIDON
•Type: Greek Temple
•Architectural style: Classical
•Location: Sounion, Greece
•Construction started: 444 BC
•Completed: 440 BC

11. HISTORY
•The original, Archaic-period temple of Poseidon on the site, which was built of tufa, was
probably destroyed in 480 BC by Persian troops during Xerxes I's invasion of Greece.
•The temple of Poseidon at Sounion was constructed in 444–440 BC. This was during the
ascendancy of the Athenian statesman Pericles, who also rebuilt the Parthenon in Athens. It was
built on the ruins of a temple dating from the Archaic period.

12. ARCHITECTURE
•The design of the peripteros temple is a typical
hexastyle, i.e., it had a front portico with six Doric
columns
•16 out of the 38 columns are standing today (of which
four were re-erected in the 20th century).
•The temple closely resembles the contemporary and
well-preserved Temple of Hephaestus beneath the
Acropolis, which may have been designed by the same
architect.
TEMPLE OF HEPHAESTUS

13. ARCHITECTURE
•As with all Greek temples, the Poseidon building was rectangular, with a
colonnade on all four sides encompassing the peristasis.
•The columns are of the Doric Order. They were made of white marble
quarried locally at Laureotic Olympus.
•They were 6.10 m (20 ft) high, with a diameter of 1 m (3.1 ft) at the base
and 79 cm (31 inches) at the top
• It would have contained, at one end facing the entrance, the cult image, a
colossal, ceiling-height (6 metres (20 ft)) bronze statue of Poseidon.

14. ACROPOLIS
• The Acropolis of Athens is an ancient citadel located on
a rocky outcrop above the city of Athens and contains
the remains of several ancient buildings of great
architectural and historic significance, the most famous
being the Parthenon
• Although the term acropolis is generic and there are
many other acropoleis in Greece, the significance of the
Acropolis of Athens is such that it is commonly known as
"The Acropolis" without qualification

15. HISTORY
•The hill was inhabited as far as the fourth millennium BC
•Pericles (c. 495–429 BC) in the fifth century BC who coordinated the construction of the site's
most important present remains including the Parthenon, the Propylaea, the Erechtheion and
the Temple of Athena Nike
•The Parthenon and the other buildings were damaged seriously during the 1687 siege by the
Venetians during the Morean War when gunpowder being stored in the Parthenon was hit by a
cannonball and exploded

16. HISTORY
•Most of the major temples, including the
Parthenon, were rebuilt by order of
Pericles during the so-called Golden Age
of Athens (460–430 BC).
•Phidias, an Athenian sculptor, and Ictinus
and Callicrates, two famous architects,
were responsible for the reconstruction.

17. PROPYLAE
•During 437 BC, Mnesicles started building the Propylaea, a
monumental gate at the western end of the Acropolis with
Doric columns of Pentelic marble, built partly upon the old
propylaea of Peisistratos
•The structure consists of a central building with two adjoining
wings on the west (outer) side, one to the north and one to the
south
•The core is the central building, which presents a standard six-
columned Doric façade both on the West to those entering the
Acropolis and on the east to those departing

18. PLAN OF THE PROPYLAE

19. ERECTHEUM
•The temple as seen today was built between 421 and 406 BC.
Its architect may have been Mnesicles, and it derived its name
from a shrine dedicated to the legendary Greek hero
Erichthonius
•The sculptor and mason of the structure was Phidias, who was
employed by Pericles to build both the Erechtheum and the
Parthenon
•The main structure consists of up to four compartments, the
largest being the east cella, with an Ionic portico on its east
end. The entire temple is on a slope, so the west and north
sides are about 3 m (9 ft) lower than the south and east sides

20. ERECTHEUM
•It was built entirely of marble
•It had elaborately carved doorways and windows, and its columns were ornately decorated
•On the north side, there is another large porch with six Ionic columns, and on the south, the
famous "Porch of the Maidens", with six draped female figures (caryatids) as supporting
columns
PORCH OF THE CARYATIDS PLAN OF THE ERECTHEUM

21. LATER HISTORY
•During the Byzantine period the Acropolis went through a lot of changes and it was used as a
church, administrative centre, cathedral etc.,
•The Ottomans used it as garrison headquarters and the Parthenon was used as a pleasure
building
•After the independence, most features that dated from the Byzantine, Frankish and Ottoman
periods were cleared from the site in an attempt to restore the monument to its original form,
"cleansed" of all later addition
• A link to the 3D rendition of the Acropolis readable on Windows is attached below
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/Acropolis_3D.stl

22. SITE PLAN OF THE ACROPOLIS
1. Parthenon
2. Old Temple of Athena
3. Erechtheum
4. Statue of Athena Promachos
5. Propylaea
6. Temple of Athena Nike
7. Eleusinion
8. Sanctuary of Artemis
Brauronia or Brauroneion
9. Chalkotheke
10. Pandroseion
11. Arrephorion
12. Altar of Athena
13. Sanctuary of Zeus Polieus
14. Sanctuary of Pandion
15. Odeon of Herodes Atticus
16. Stoa of Eumenes
17. Sanctuary of Asclepius or
Asclepieion
18. Theatre of Dionysus Eleuthereus
19. Odeon of Pericles
20. Temenos of Dionysus
Eleuthereus
21. Aglaureion