Greek Parthenon?

Question

does anyone know an intersting fact on the Greek Paarthenon?

Answer 1

1. It was built in 7 years, which is an impressively short time for the work it has. We take much longer to rebuild only small parts that have collapsed!
2. No line in the Parhenon is straight: they are all slightly curved, with a geometric precision of 1/10 of a millimeter, in order to look slightly in tension (although the curve is imperceptible)
3. The Parthenon combines features of the doric order and the ionic order, a novelty conceived by a great architect, Iktinos. All these features have reached at the Parthenon the most excellent proportions, craftsmanship and perfection.
4. Fidias, the sculptor who worked at the Parthenon, had also created the temple of Zeus in Olympia, one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world.
5. The Parhenon (=temple of the Virgin, Athena)was converted to a church dedicated to the Virgin Mary in Christian years
6. It was intact until 1687, when the Turks had turned it into a storage place for amuntion and the Venitians, who were sieging Athens, bombed it.
7. When the Greeks tried to occupy the Acropolis fortress back from the Turks,during the war of Independence 1n 1821, the Turks destroyed further the Parthenon to extract lead from the joints and make bullets. In order to avoid that, the Greek general Pittakis sent many bullets over to the Turks, to fight him, just so that the monument would be saved.
8. After the bombing of 1687, lord Elgin illegally ripped the monument of the sculptures and took them to the Bristish museum. Illegaly, 1st. because he had paid off local authorities and he had no permission from the Sultan, which was necessary since Greece was part of the Ottoman empire at the time, and because he had agreed to take pieces fallen to the ground, but instead he cut off parts from the building, even parts with structural meaning (at teh Erechtheion he took a column and a Caryatis). The masterpieces were overcleaned at the British museum with wire brushes, taking the original surface off. So far for the "protection" they received. The greek government has built a new museum, with space for the Elgin sculptures, and claims them back.

Answer 2

Here is an interesting architectural fact about the Parthenon. If you extend an imaginary line from every single column running along the length of the building these lines will converge to a single point about a kilometer high. The same applies for the front and back columns but their apex is about 2/3 of the way. The lines form two pyramids, one inside the other. (You asked for a fact not the history of the Parthenon). Another interesting thing is that it was not really a temple to Athena but the treasury of the Athenians disguised as a temple.

Answer 3

The two first responders to your question have absolutely excellent answers, but there is so much to be said about the Parthenon that veritable tomes have been written about it.
As an architect, let me add my two cents worth.
The proportions of the building are held to today as the golden rule of architecture and regardless of the period, architects from Palladio and Wren to Le Corbusier, Frank Lloyd Wright, Eero Saarinen and I.M.Pei have incorporated and still still use within their designs the 4 to 9 ratio as the most aesthetic rectangular proportion.
So, aside from being a symbol of the most advanced civilization and golden society ever in human history, the Parthenon built to human proportions exemplifies the absolute perfection in aesthetics.

Answer 4

As a post and lintel temple, the Parthenon presents no engineering breakthrough in building construction. However its stylistic conventions have become the paradigm of Classical architecture, and its style has influenced architecture for many centuries after it was built.

The Parthenon is a large temple, but it is by no means the largest one in Greece. Its aesthetic appeal emanates from the refinement of many established norms of Greek architecture, and from the quality of its sculptural decoration. The Parthenon epitomizes all the ideals of Greek thought during the apogee of the Classical era through artistic means. The idealism of the Greek way of living, the attention to detail, as well as the understanding of a mathematically explained harmony in the natural world, were concepts that in every Athenian’s eyes set them apart from the barbarians. These ideals are represented in the perfect proportions of the building, in its intricate architectural elements, and in the anthropomorphic statues that adorned it.

Some of these details were found in other Greek temples while some were unique to the Parthenon. The temple owes its refined appeal to the subtle details that were built into the architectural elements to accommodate practical needs or to enhance the building’s visual appeal.

The fact that there are no absolute straight lines on the Parthenon bestows a subtle organic character to an obvious geometric structure. The columns of the peristyle taper on a slight arc as they reach the top of the building giving the impression that they are swollen from entasis (tension) - as if they were burdened by the weight of the roof; a subtle feature that allots anthropomorphic metaphors to other wise inanimate objects.

The peristyle columns are over ten meters tall, and incline slightly towards the center of the building at the top (about 7 cm), while the platform upon which they rest bows on a gentle arc which brings the corners about 12 cm closer to the ground that the middle.

The architects of the Parthenon appear to be excellent scholars of visual illusion, an attribute undoubtedly sharpened by years of architectural refinement and observation of the natural world. They designed the columns that appear at the corners of the temple to be 1/40th (about 6 cm) larger in diameter than all the other columns, while they made the space around them smaller than the rest of the columns by about 25 cm. The reason for this slight adaptation of the corner columns is due to the fact that they are set against the bright sky, which would make them appear a little thinner and a little further apart than the columns set against the darker background of the building wall. The increase in size and decrease of space thus compensates for the illusion that the bright background would normally cause.

These subtle features set the Parthenon apart from all other Greek temples because the overall effect is a departure from the static Doric structures of the past, towards a more dynamic form of architectural expression. Moreover, the intricate refinements of the forms required unprecedented precision that would be challenging to achieve even in our time. But it was not mere grandeur through subtlety that the Athenians desired. It is evident that they sought to out-shine all other temples of the time through the lavish sculptural decoration of the Parthenon, and its imposing dimensions. The doors that lead to the cella were abundantly decorated with relief sculptures of gorgons, lion heads and other bronze relief ornaments.

The Athenian citizens were proud of their cultural identity, and conscious of the historical magnitude of their ideas. They believed that they were civilized among barbarians, and that their cultural and political achievements were bound to alter the history of all civilized people. The catalyst for all their accomplishments was the development of a system of governance the likes of which the world had never seen: Democracy.

Democracy, arguably the epitome of the Athenian way of thinking, was at center stage while the Parthenon was built. This was a direct democracy where every citizen had a voice in the common issues through the Assembly that met on the Pnyx hill next to the Acropolis forty times per year to decide on all matters of policy, domestic or foreign.

The fact that common people are depicted as individuals for the first time at the Parthenon frieze was owed to the fact that for the first time in history every citizen of a city was recognized as a significant entity and a considerable moving force in the polis and the observable universe.

Parthenon Facts
Year Built: 447-432 BCE
Precise Dimensions:
Width East: 30.875 m
Width West: 30.8835 m
Length North: 69.5151 m
Lenght South: 69.5115 m
Width to Ratio: 9:4
Width to height Ratio (without the Pediments): 9:4
Number of stones used to built the Parthenon: Approximated at 13400 stones.
Architects: Iktinos and Kallikrates
Parthenon Cost: 469 talents
Coordinates (of Plaka area just below the Acropolis): 37° 58'N, 23° 43'E

Answer 5

Well, I think after the first 3 incredibly informative answers, with their well researched, incrediblyl detailed and informative descriptions there is only one thing left to say.
This building rocks! The greeks built really cool stuff and we so far ahead of their time it is truly mind boggling.

Answer 6

There is not any straight line anywhere on the Parthenon.