The Parthenon: building, sculptures and story

The Parthenon (Παρθενών) is a temple, in Greek a ναός: the house of a god. The Athenians built it for Athena, the goddess who protected their city. One of her names was Athena Parthenos, “Athena the maiden”, because in the myths she never married. The word παρθένος meant a young, unmarried woman.

The ending -ών means “a place” or “a room”, so Παρθενών was “the room of the maiden”. Historians think the name first belonged to one room inside the temple and later to the whole building, but they are not sure exactly which room it was.

The temple was planned after the Persian Wars. In 480 BC the Persians had burned the temples on the Acropolis, including an older Parthenon that was still being built. In 448 BC the Athenians decided to rebuild their holy places, and the Parthenon was the first new building. Work began in 447 BC, when Pericles (Περικλῆς) led the city. The architects were Iktinos and Kallikrates, and the sculptor Pheidias (Φειδίας) watched over the whole project, as the writer Plutarch tells us.

The Parthenon is a temple in the Doric order, the simplest and strongest of the Greek styles, but it also has many Ionic features. It is built of white marble (μάρμαρον). A row of columns (κίονες) runs all the way round it: 8 at each end and 17 along each side. Its platform measures about 31 by 70 metres, and each outer column is about 10.4 metres tall.

Inside there were two rooms. The larger, eastern room held the great statue of Athena. The smaller western room had four Ionic columns, and from 433 BC the city kept its public money there.

The builders used clever tricks, which experts call “refinements”, to make the heavy building look light and alive:

• the floor and the beams above the columns curve gently upwards in the middle;
• each column swells a little in the middle, a curve called entasis (ἔντασις);
• the columns at the corners stand closer together than the others.

The building was finished in 438 BC. The sculptures of the two pediments took a few more years and were completed in 432 BC.

The Parthenon was covered in sculpture, made by a team of sculptors led by Pheidias. It had three kinds of carved decoration:

• The pediments (ἀετώματα), the two triangles under the roof at each end. The east pediment showed the birth of Athena; the west one showed her contest with the sea god Poseidon for the land of Athens. The traveller Pausanias describes both (Pausanias 1.24.5).
• The metopes (μετόπαι), square panels above the outer columns. They showed mythical battles: gods against Giants on the east, Greeks against Amazons on the west, Lapiths against Centaurs on the south, and the Trojan War on the north.
• The frieze (ζῳοφόρος), a carved band about 160 metres long, high up on the walls behind the columns. It showed a procession of riders, chariots, musicians and animals for sacrifice, usually understood as the great festival of Athens, the Panathenaia. In the middle of the east side, a scene with a folded cloth may show the new robe (πέπλος) given to Athena, but scholars still debate it.

Most sculptures were once painted, though only tiny traces of colour survive. Inside stood Pheidias’ statue (ἄγαλμα) of Athena, made of gold and ivory. She was armed and held a small Victory (Νίκη) in her hand. The Roman writer Pliny gives its height as 26 cubits, about 11–12 metres. The statue is lost; we know it from small later copies.

The Parthenon stayed almost complete for many centuries. In late Roman times a fire damaged it, and it was repaired in the 4th century AD. Later it was turned into a Christian church. Sources date this change differently, from soon after the repairs to around AD 600. In 1205, under Latin (Western) rule, it was dedicated to the Mother of God of Athens. After the Ottoman Turks took the Acropolis in 1458, it became a mosque (sources date the change from soon after the conquest to a few decades later), and a stairway inside became a minaret.

The worst disaster came in 1687. A Venetian army besieged the Acropolis, and the Ottoman garrison had stored gunpowder inside the temple. During the bombardment the gunpowder exploded, and much of the building collapsed. In the early 19th century, agents of Lord Elgin removed many of the remaining sculptures; the debate about them has its own page.

After the modern Greek state was founded, the Parthenon became a national symbol. Restorers worked on it from 1896 to 1902 and from 1923 to 1933. Since 1975, Greek experts have been repairing it stone by stone, and many of its original sculptures are now in the Acropolis Museum.