At the rock of the Ecclesia, you can see the three steps of the Bema. Look for a little cliff, and the steps carved on the side of the cliff.
Now, on this side, here we have the gates. Right in the middle are the five doors on the marble wall behind the columns. In front of the gates, we have a porch with 12 columns, six at the front of Doric style and six inside of Ionic style.
On the left side, we have a room which is almost in ruins.
It was the room where the meals after the sacrifices were observed, and the people could have some rest before entering and venerating in the temple, in the sanctuary, and also, on the left, to have some spiritual preparation.
On the right, at the top of this short tower, like a bastion, we have the first temple of the three that survived. It is the Temple of Victory, the Temple of Nike.
Athenians always attributed their victories to the gods.
They knew that they didn’t deserve a victory against the Persians, so they built this temple to the goddess Athena, and they dedicated the temple not to the Goddess Nike, the goddess of victory, the flying girl, but to the goddess Athena.
There the Athenians worshiped Athena for the victory against the Persians. This is why this temple is also mentioned as the Temple of Victory. Athena was not depicted with wings like the goddess Nike.
The destruction is not because of a natural disaster or an earthquake, but because the place here was bombarded at the end of the 17th century. As you see on the marble wall, the signs of the attack are visible.
I would like you to go through the gates and through the colonnades to see the intact parts of the columns that are still matching each other in such a perfect way, even though they were bombarded, that even the thinnest piece of paper cannot go through.
Also, I would like you to see the reconstructed part of the ceiling with the covers and get closer to better see the Ionic capital.
When they decided to rebuild the Acropolis, the first thing they did was to collect all the marble that had been destroyed and scattered around by the Persian army and bury it.
This was part of their effort to clear the summit and prepare for the reconstruction of the Acropolis. And then they brought marble from the mound, which is far behind the hill of the horizon, (where the clouds are) called Pentelikon (Mount Pentelicus), just opposite the Conservation Center. It is estimated that they brought more than 20,000 tons of marble, with the blocks weighing between four to 14 tons. In less than 10 years (nine years and some months) they completed the first temple, which is the Parthenon. It took them six more years for the sculptural decoration. Parthenon means the house of the Virgin. Parthenos, in Greek, means virgin, and the goddess of wisdom was considered to be a virgin. The Virgin goddess of wisdom, the lady wisdom. Athenians liked to offer to the goddess of wisdom the best they could for creating her house, her temple, and so we’ll speak of its’ exceptional artifacts in architecture.
First, we would usually say that a typical Doric temple is made of straight lines, vertical and horizontal. Do you agree with that? But the Athenian engineers knew all about optical illusion, and they knew that if they made the lines of this building geometrically straight, then the human eye (from the entrance to the point when the eye loses the panoramic view and is focused on the detail) would see the lines curved because of human-eye illusion. So they made optical adjustments to present a more accurate visual experience. corrections, a restitution of reality. They studied illusions. This optical illusion, for the first time in history, became a mathematical parameter, and they purposely made all the lines of this building curve the opposite way. So the human eye approaching the building would see perfectly straight lines.
There are no lines on this building that are straight, geometrically speaking; they are all curved, and this is why we see them as straight. If they were made straight, we would see them curved due to human-eye illusion.
Second, let’s look at the columns. We see the columns, and we think the columns were made all the same. But each column receives different amounts of light and forms different shadows. If they were all made exactly the same, we would perceive them differently. This is due to the way light and shadow affect our perception. Objects in the light appear smaller and thinner, while objects in the shade appear bigger and fatter. To counteract this optical illusion, the Athenians needed to make each column slightly different to ensure they all looked uniform to the human eye.
So they studied the position of each one of these columns for one year, and they made averages. They even studied the sunrise angles that would strike each column. Each one of these columns is unique for the place where it is erected. Generally speaking, the corner columns were made thicker because they received the most light. Gradually, they get thinner as we enter the shade. There is a gradual general difference from one to the other, estimated to be 2.5%. Partially and as a unit, this building, this temple, is based on the rules of the golden ratio. It is not vertical. If it was built vertically (which would be an easier thing to do) it would create the impression that skyscrapers create for us when we approach them – that they are ready to fall upon us, creating a negative feeling of fear. The architects of antiquity, trying to avoid negative feelings in the hearts of the pilgrims of that time, gave the building a slight inclination inwards. At a height of approximately 5,000 meters, the opposite columns should meet each other, and the building should take the shape of a prism, as you have understood already. We started speaking about the aesthetics and the specifications of this building and we could stay here for hours speaking about this topic; it is a really big topic.
Everything we see is not what it seems, but it is made purposely for us to see it as we see it. It is not what we think it is. We could speak of a brilliant mathematical artifact.
Another thing that we have to praise here is the execution of the temple. It’s excellence is not only a project on paper, but there is excellence in the execution with chisel and hammer, transferring the project from paper to three dimensions in marble, within a proximity of less than one millimeter. The building is built of 16,500 unique blocks. Today, we are able to find the actual place of even little fragments. Because of the curvature today, fragments can be fully identified because they don’t fit in any other place of the building. Inside of the temple was the cult statue of the goddess. The cult statue of the goddess was 12 meters tall, almost like one of the columns. It was made of gold and ivory. It is estimated that they used 1,150 kilos of gold for the golden parts. It was inside for approximately 1,000 years and was the object of worship for ancient Athenians.
At the end of the fourth century AD… remember what happened in Thessaloniki with Theodosius I and how he started the introduction of Christianity (the faith of love to the non-Christians) by using his army to kill 7,000 Thessalonians in the Hippodrome of the city of Thessaloniki, just because they were not Christians?
Then we have the massive conversion of the city of Athens to Christianity. The Athenians wanted to survive, after they heard what happened in Thessaloniki, so the entire city formed a procession and went down to the sea. on the same day they were all baptized as Christians. The temple of the Virgin goddess of wisdom was converted to a Christian church dedicated to another virgin, Virgin Mary. The Virgin Mary was co-worshiped inside with Hagia Sophia, the holy wisdom. Everybody was happy: Theodosius, because Athens was converted to Christianity overnight, and the Athenians, not only because they survived, but because they could worship at the same temples of virginity and wisdom as they did before, under a Christian cover. For 1,000 more years, the temple was the Christian cathedral of Athens. In the middle of the 15th century, the Ottomans came, and the temple was turned into a mosque. At the end of the 17th century, during the second Turkish-Venetian war, the summit was used as a fortress, and the temple as an arsenal, where the Turks gathered their ammunition and gunpowder. On the other side, the Venetian Admiral Francesco Morosini set his artillery on top of this hill, and from there he bombarded the summit, causing severe destruction to the monuments. In 1801, the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, with permission from the Sultan, came and collected as many sculptural decorations as possible that he could from the ruins. Since 1818, the sculptural decorations of the Parthenon, are a main collection of the British Museum but there are parts of the sculptural decorations that you can see in the new Acropolis Museum. At the beginning of the 20th century, archaeologists discovered that a lot of lead used in antiquity to join the marble blocks to each other was removed, obviously turned into bullets during the wars. Afraid of collapses after an earthquake, they decided to fill the empty spaces with iron and concrete. The iron caused damage to the marble because it rusted and broke the marble into pieces. Since 1975, there has been a project of reconstruction. The first thing is to take off the iron and the concrete. If they need to use metal now, they use titanium. If they need to strengthen broken marble parts or recreate a new block because they have other pieces and it is necessary for them to be fixed, they use marble from the ancient marble quarries of the same quality, stuck on the ancient parts with a very special glue, which makes them one body. If they need to remove the addition, they can do that without using chisel and hammer, but with solutions and liquids. Considering even little fragments as artifacts themselves, they found more than 700 pieces fully identified in the fissures and put them back. And the project goes on.
How did they get all the marble and everything up here? They had almost the same equipment we have today, but their equipment was wooden, with a limit of 14 tons.
When visiting the Acropolis Museum (at the level where the restaurant is) you can see a model of the wooden crane. Four men could lift up to 14 tons using the crane with the pulleys and gears. What did they use to cut? Actually, there were different stages for cutting marble. The first stage was to make holes in the block they had chosen, and to put wooden wedges in these holes, and to fill the area with water, making the wood solid. This would break the marble roughly, and then with their chisel and hammer, they gave it the proper shape. Everywhere we see, we have to praise not only the architects and the engineers, but also the marble workers. It is really a special and unique creation made by free people, happy people, people who were in a euphoric period of their history. What happened to the idol? It disappeared. Theodosius possibly recycled it into coins.