The
Parthenon is a temple on the Athenian Acropolis, Greece, dedicated to
the Greek goddess Athena, whom the people of Athens considered their
virgin patron.
Its construction began in 447 BC when the Athenian
Empire was at the height of its power. It was completed in 438 BC,
although decorations of the Parthenon continued until 432 BC.
It is the
most important surviving building of Classical Greece, generally
considered the culmination of the development of the Doric order.
Its decorative sculptures are considered some of the high points of Greek art.
The Parthenon is regarded as an enduring symbol of Ancient Greece and
of Athenian democracy and one of the world's greatest cultural
monuments. The Greek Ministry of Culture is currently carrying out a
program of selective restoration and reconstruction to ensure the
stability of the partially ruined structure.
The Parthenon itself replaced an older temple of Athena, which
historians call the Pre-Parthenon or Older Parthenon, that was destroyed
in the Persian invasion of 480 BC. The temple is
archaeoastronomically aligned to the Pleiades.Like most Greek temples,
the Parthenon was used as a treasury. For a time, it served as the
treasury of the Delian League, which later became the Athenian Empire.
The Parthenon, an octostyle, peripteral Doric temple with Ionic
architectural features, housed the chryselephantine statue of Athena
Parthenos sculpted by Phidias and dedicated in 439 or 438 BC.
The
decorative stonework was originally highly coloured. The temple was
dedicated to Athena at that time, though construction continued until
almost the beginning of the Peloponnesian War in 432. By the year 438,
the sculptural decoration of the Doric metopes on the frieze above the
exterior colonnade, and of the Ionic frieze around the upper portion of
the walls of the cella, had been completed.
The richness of the
Parthenon's frieze and metope decoration is in agreement with the
function of the temple as a treasury. In the opisthodomus (the back room
of the cella) were stored the monetary contributions of the Delian
League, of which Athens was the leading member.
source: wikipedia
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