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The Parthenon
The Architects/Designers | Construction Techniques

The Parthenon is one of the many most well known architectural wonders in the entire world and also one of the most attractive. Almost all the people in Greece are Greek Orthodox, which makes them all aware of the purpose of the Parthenon.

          Today, some schools and organizations help restore and beautify the Parthenon as much as possible for everyone to observe and marvel at the Parthenons brilliance and magnificence.

 

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The Acropolis

          The Parthenon is the major building above all other buildings on the Acropolis. It was the first temple to be constructed on the Acropolis and also the most popular. All the temples were constructed after 480 BC to substitute for the previous holy buildings that were destroyed and incomplete in the Persian attack.

The Acropolis had formerly been constructed to be a citadel (a fortress) but in time had eventually come to be used as a place of safety for the worship of the many Greek gods.

           Deck our city like a vain woman with precious stones and statues and thousand of talent temples (Thucydides). Though his effort, Thucydides was overruled, and in 447 BC the construction work on the temples began.

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Location 

Temple of Athena Polias, better known as the Parthenon is a beautiful architectural wonder that has been around for thousands of years. The Parthenon is located in central Athens, Greece, which the capital of Greece. Many tourists visit Athens to take a look at the Parthenon up close.   

The Parthenon is a religious temple located on the Acropolis along with other temples like the Propylaia, the temple of Nike, the Erechtheusand other small buildings.

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History

In the summer of 490 BC the Persian navy sailed down the Athenian coast and sent armies from the skies on the terrain of Marathon.

 The Athenian people had been expecting this assault. Exactly nine years before the Greek city-states in Asia Minor had risen up against the law of the Persian king and had pleaded for help from their neighbors in mainland Greece. Athens and close by Eretria had sent help. Five years later, the Persians demolished the riot. Afterwards, they turned their awareness to the punishing the Greek cities that had helped the rebels. As Eretria fell, it looked as though Athens would be next to get attacked.

The Persian armed forces hugely outnumbered the miniature Athenian army that was ready for battle, followed by 1000 men from the allied forces from the city of Plataea, to face them.

When the battle was on, the Persians broke through the Athenian center, but the sides were very strong and finally blocked the more lightly armed Persians in a slow movement. At the end of the 192nd day, the Athenian army had fallen but, 6400 Persians lay dead on the battle field.

The Persians vowed they would take revenge for their humiliation that they had experienced, but it was a whole ten years after the war that the Persians launched their promised assault.

In their moment of their victory, the Athenians decided to construct an impressive new temple on the south side of their acropolis, the Parthenon. The new temple (the Parthenon) was most likely planned not only as a thank-offering to the goddess Athena, who the Athenians people strongly assumed had helped them achieve their victory against the Persians, but also as a cenotaph to the men who had fought and died in the war who had definitely helped to win it. For the Greeks the gods were powerful figures who could either harm or help human beings. The construction development of the Parthenon was still only started to be built when the Persians returned with a full force attack on Athens in 480 BC. This time the Persians succeeded in invading Athens, firing the city with many explosions, and burning all the buildings on the Acropolis, including the early stages of the development of the Parthenon.

The Greeks lived in independent settlement and were usually active bickering amongst themselves. Most of them joined forces to take on the Persian threat, but the Persians killed all in their path of them. When it became understandable that Athens could not protected their homes any more, the Athenians, after evacuating all those powerless to fight, left all their possessions and memories like their homes, temples, fields, and orchids to climb on the ship and carry on the war at the mighty sea.

The Athenians bravery was rewarded, for through skill and courage they authorized the Greeks to obliterate the Persian navy in the bay of Salamis. The following year, under the control and guidance of Sparta, the city with the best hand-picked army, the combined Greeks overpowered the Persians on a land terrain near Plataea. On the battleground of Plataea the Greeks had an oath never to rebuild the temples on the Acropolis that the Persians had ruined, but leave them wrecked, everlasting evidence to the Persians wickedness.

When the Athenians returned to their shattered country, they deposited broken leftover columns of the partly constructed temple into the walls of the acropolis as a kind of war cenotaph. Soon after the war, construction quickly commenced to make a new building. This was the new Parthenon in which the construction was finished.

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