Unlocking Mysteries of the Parthenon

Restoration of the 2,500-year-old temple is yielding new insights into the engineering feats of the golden age's master builders

  • By Evan Hadingham
  • Smithsonian magazine, February 2008, Subscribe
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The Parthenon said the 19th-century French engineer Auguste Choisy represents the supreme effort of genius in pursuit of beauty.
The Parthenon, said the 19th-century French engineer Auguste Choisy, represents "the supreme effort of genius in pursuit of beauty." (Aris Messinis/ AFP/ Getty Images)

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View of the Temple of Apollo, Didyma, Turkey, planned around a sanctuary and oracle of the sun god beginning around 334 BC. Construction continued intermittently for another 600 years but the temple was never finished, so its surfaces never received a final polishing. This preserved both full-size and scaled-down construction drawings that the original masons engraved as guides or blueprints for building specific components, such as the massive 65 feet-tall columns. These almost invisible engraved drawings gave important clues to how ancient Greek temple builders solved various architectural design challenges.

Explore more photos from the story

Related Books

The Parthenon: From Antiquity to the Present

by Jenifer Neils (Editor)
Cambridge University Press (New York), 2005

The Origins of the Greek Architectural Orders

by Barbara A. Barletta
Cambridge University Press, 2001

The Parthenon and Its Impact in Modern Times

by Panayotis Tournikiotis (Editor)
Melissa Publishing House (Athens, Greece), 1994

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(Page 3 of 3)

No matter the motivation for these refinements, many early scholars assumed that crafting such visual elements imposed tremendous extra demands on the Parthenon’s architects and masons. (One wrote of the “terrifyingcomplications” involved.) No architectural manuals survive from the Classical Greek era, but today’s experts suspect the temple builders could add curves and inclined angles with a few relatively simple surveying tricks. “If you’re building without mortar, every block...must be trimmed by hand,” notes Jim Coulton, professor emeritus of classical archaeology at Oxford University. “Although tilts and curvatures would require careful supervision by the architect, they don’t add a lot to the workload.”

Still, how could each column segment be measured so that all would fit together in a single, smoothly curving profile? The likely answer was found not in Athens but nearly 200 miles away in southwestern Turkey. In the town of Didyma rises one of the most impressive relics of the ancient world, the Temple of Apollo. Three of its 120 colossal columns still stand, each nearly twice the height of the Parthenon’s. The wealthy trading city of Miletus commissioned the temple in the age of Alexander the Great, around 150 years after completion of the Parthenon. The gigantic ruins testify to a project of grandiose ambition: it was never finished despite 600 years of construction efforts. But thanks to its unfinished state, crucial evidence was preserved on temple walls that had not yet undergone their final polishing.

A few years after the Parthenon restoration began, University of Pennsylvania scholar Lothar Haselberger was on a field trip exploring the Temple of Apollo’s innermost sanctuary. He noticed what seemed to be patterns of faint scratches on the marble walls. In the blinding morning sunlight the scratches are all but invisible, as I discovered to my initial frustration when I searched for them. After the sun had swung around and began grazing the surface, however, a delicate web of finely engraved lines started to emerge. Haselberger recalls, “All of a sudden I spotted a series of circles that corresponded precisely to the shape of a column base, the very one at the front of the temple.” He realized he had discovered the ancient equivalent of an architect’s blueprint.

Then, just above the outline of the column base, Haselberger noticed a pattern of horizontal lines with a sweeping curve inscribed along one side. Could this be related to entasis, also evident in the towering Didyma columns? After carefully plotting the pattern, the answer became clear: it was a profile view of a column with the vertical dimension—the height of the column—reduced by a factor of 16. This scale drawing must have been a key reference for the masons as they carved out one column segment after another. By measuring along the horizontal lines to the edge of the curve, they would know exactly how wide each segment would have to be to create the smooth, bulging profile. Manolis Korres believes that the ancient Athenians probably relied on a carved scale drawing similar to the one at Didyma in building the columns of the Parthenon.

Haselberger also traced a labyrinth of faint scratches covering most of the temple’s unfinished surfaces. The lines proved to be reference drawings for everything from the very slight inward lean of the walls to details of the lintel structure supported by the columns. There were even floor plans, drafted conveniently right on the floor. As the temple’s stepped platform rose, each floor plan was copied from one layer to thenext. On the topmost floor, the builders marked out the positions of columns, walls and doorways.

The discoveries at Didyma suggest that the temple builders operated on a “plan-as-you-go” basis. “Clearly, a lot of advance planning went into a building like the Parthenon,” Coulton says. “But it wasn’t planning inthe sense that we’d recognize today. There’s no evidence they relied on a single set of plans and elevations drawn to scale as a modern architect would.”

Still, the Parthenon remains something of a miracle. The builders were steered by tradition, yet free to experiment. They worked to extreme precision, yet the final result was anything but rigid. A commanding building, with supple and fluid lines, emerged from a blend of improvised solutions.

But the miracle was short-lived. Only seven years after the construction of the Parthenon was completed, war broke out with Sparta. Within a generation, Athens suffered a humiliating defeat and a devastating plague.The story of the Parthenon resembles an ancient Greek tragedy, in which an exceptional figure suffers a devastating reversal of fortune. And from Korres’ perspective, that calamity is all the more reason to restore the greatest remnant of Athens’ golden age. “We wanted to preserve the beauty of what has survived these past 2,500 years,” he says. “A reminder of man’s power to create, as well as to destroy.”


Editor’s Note: This article was adapted from its original form and updated to include new information for Smithsonian’s Mysteries of the Ancient World bookazine published in Fall 2009.

During the past 2,500 years, the Parthenon—the apotheosis of ancient Greek architecture—has been rocked by earthquakes, set on fire, shattered by exploding gunpowder, looted for its stunning sculptures and defaced by misguided preservation efforts. Amazingly, the ancient Athenians built the Parthenon in just eight or nine years. Repairing it is taking a bit longer.

A restoration project funded by the Greek government and the European Union is now entering its 34th year, as archaeologists, architects, civil engineers and craftsmen strive not simply to imitate the workmanship ofthe ancient Greeks but to recreate it. They have had to become forensic architects, reconstructing long-lost techniques to answer questions that archaeologists and classical scholars have debated for centuries. How did the Athenians construct their mighty temple, an icon of Western civilization, in less than a decade—apparently without an overall building plan? How did they manage to incorporate subtle visual elements into theParthenon’s layout and achieve such faultless proportions and balance? And how were the Parthenon’s builders able to work at a level of precision (in some cases accurate to within a fraction of a millimeter) without the benefit of modern tools? “We’re not as good as they were,” Lena Lambrinou, an architect on the restoration project, observes with a sigh.

If the Parthenon represents “the supreme effort of genius in pursuit of beauty,” as the 19th-century French engineer and architectural historian Auguste Choisy declared, lately it has been looking more like a construction site. Ancient masonry hides behind thickets of scaffolding, planks and steel poles. Miniature rail tracks connect sheds that house lathes, marble cutters and other power equipment. In the Parthenon’s innermost sanctuary, once the home of a massive ivory-and-gold statue of Athena, a gigantic collapsible crane turns on a concrete platform.

Though heavy equipment dominated the hilltop, I also found restorers working with the delicacy of diamond cutters. In one shed, I watched a mason toiling on a fresh block of marble. He was one of some 70 craftsmen recruited for the project from Greece’s sole remaining traditional marble school, located on the island of Tinos. His technique was exacting. To make the new block exactly match an old, broken one, the mason used a simple pointing device—the three-dimensional equivalent of a pantograph, which is a drafting instrument for precisely copying a sketch or blueprint—to mark and transfer every bump and hollow from the ancient stone to its counterpart surface on the fresh block. On some of the largest Parthenon blocks, which exceed ten tons, the masons use a mechanized version of the pointing device, but repairing a single block can still take more than three months. The ancient workers were no less painstaking; in many cases, the joints between the blocks are all but invisible, even under a magnifying glass.

The Parthenon was part of an ambitious building campaign on the Acropolis that began around 450 b.c. A generation before, the Athenians, as part of an alliance of Greek city-states, had led heroic victories against Persian invaders. This alliance would evolve into a de facto empire under Athenian rule, and some 150 to 200 cities across the Aegean began paying Athens huge sums of what amounted to protection money. Basking in glory, the Athenians planned their new temple complex on a lavish, unprecedented scale—with the Parthenon as the centerpiece. Surviving fragments of the financial accounts, which were inscribed in stone for public scrutiny, have prompted estimates of the construction budget that range from around 340 to 800 silver talents—a considerable sum in an age when a single talent could pay a month’s wages for 170 oarsmen on a Greek warship. The Parthenon’s base was 23,028 square feet (about half the size of a football field) and its 46 outer columns were some 34 feet high. A 525-foot frieze wrapped around the top of the exterior wall of the building’s inner chamber. Several scholars have argued that the frieze shows a procession related to the quadrennial Great Panathenaia, or the festival “of all the Athenians.” By incorporating this scene of civic celebration, the scholars suggest, the Parthenon served not merely as an imperial propaganda statement but also as an expression of Athens’ burgeoning democracy—the will of the citizens who had voted to fund this exceptional monument.

When the current restoration effort began in 1975, backed by $23 million from the Greek government, the project’s directors believed they could finish in ten years. But unforeseen problems arose as soon as workers started disassembling the temples. For example, the ancient Greek builders had secured the marble blocks together with iron clamps fitted in carefully carved grooves. They then poured molten lead over the joints to cushion them from seismic shocks and protect the clamps from corrosion. But when a Greek architect, Nikolas Balanos, launched an enthusiastic campaign of restorations in 1898, he installed crude iron clamps, indiscriminately fastening one block to another and neglecting to add the lead coating. Rain soon began to play havoc with the new clamps, swelling the iron and cracking the marble. Less than a century later, it wasclear that parts of the Parthenon were in imminent danger of collapse.

Until September 2005, the restoration’s coordinator was Manolis Korres, associate professor of architecture at the National Technical University of Athens and a leading Parthenon scholar who had spent decades poringover every detail of the temple’s construction. In a set of vivid drawings, he depicted how the ancient builders extracted some 100,000 tons of marble from a quarry 11 miles northeast of central Athens, roughly shaped the blocks, then transported them on wagons and finally hauled them up the steep slopes of the Acropolis. Yet all that grueling labor, Kor­res contends, was dwarfed by the time and energy lavished on fine-tuning the temple’s finished appearance. Carving the long vertical grooves, or flutes, that run down each of the Parthenon’s main columns was probably as costly as all the quarrying, hauling and assembly combined.

Today’s restorers have been replacing damaged column segments with fresh marble. To speed up the job, engineers built a flute-carving machine. The device, however, is not precise enough for the final detailing, which must be done by hand. This smoothing of the flutes calls for an expert eye and a sensitive touch. To get the elliptical profile of the flute just right, a mason looks at the shadow cast inside the groove, thenchips and rubs the stone until the outline of the shadow is a perfectly even and regular curve.

The ancients spent a lot of time on another finishing touch. After the Parthenon’s exposed marble surfaces had been smoothed and polished, they added a final, subtle texture—a stippling pattern—that Korres says dulled the shine on the marble and masked its flaws. With hundreds of thousands of chisel blows, they executed this pattern in precisely ordered rows covering the base, floors, columns and most other surfaces. “This was surely one of the most demanding tasks,” Korres says. “It may have taken as much as a quarter of the total construction time expended on the monument.”

With such fanatical attention to detail, how could the Parthenon’s architects have finished the job in a mere eight or nine years, ending somewhere between 438 and 437 b.c.? (The dates come from the inscribed financial accounts.) One key factor may have been naval technology. Since the Athenians were the greatest naval power in the Aegean, they likely had unrivaled mastery of ropes, pulleys and wooden cranes. Such equipment would have facilitated the hauling and lifting of the marble blocks.

Another, counterintuitive possibility is that ancient hand tools were superior to their modern counterparts. After analyzing marks left on the marble surfaces, Korres is convinced that centuries of metallurgical experimentation enabled the ancient Athenians to create chisels and axes that were sharper and more durable than those available today. (The idea is not unprecedented. Modern metallurgists have only recently figuredout the secrets of the traditional samurai sword, which Japanese swordsmiths endowed with unrivaled sharpness and strength by regulating the amount of carbon in the steel and the temperature during forging and cooling.) Korres concludes that the ancient masons, with their superior tools, could carve marble at more than double the rate of today’s craftsmen. And the Parthenon’s original laborers had the benefit of experience, drawing on a century and a half of temple-building know-how.

Moreover, the restoration team has confronted problems that their ancient Greek counterparts could never have contemplated. During the Great Turkish War in the late 17th century—when the Ottoman Empire was battling several European countries—Greece was an occupied nation. The Turks turned the Parthenon into an ammunition dump. During a Venetian attack on Athens in 1687, a cannonball set off the Turkish munitions, blowing apartthe long walls of the Parthenon’s inner chamber. More than 700 blocks from those walls—eroded over time—now lay strewn around the Acropolis. For five years, beginning in 1997, Cathy Paraschi, a Greek-American architect on the restoration project, struggled to fit the pieces together, hunting for clues such as the shape and depth of the cuttings in the blocks that once held the ancient clamps. Eventually, she abandoned her computer database, which proved inadequate for capturing the full complexity of the puzzle. “Some days were exhilarating,” she told me, “when we finally got one piece to fit another. Other days I felt like jumping off the Acropolis.” In the end, she and her co-workers managed to identify the original positions of some 500 of the blocks. Looming over each restoration challenge is the delicate question of how far to go. Every time the workers dismantle one of Balanos’ crude fixes, it is a reminder of how destructive an overzealous restorer can be. Asthe director of the Acropolis Restoration Project, Maria Ioannidou, explains, “we’ve adopted an approach of trying to restore the maximum amount of ancient masonry while applying the minimum amount of new material.”That means using clamps and rods made of titanium—which won’t corrode and crack the marble—and soluble white cement, so that repairs can be easily undone should future generations of restorers discover a better way.

There have been some bravura feats of engineering. The 1687 explosion knocked one of the massive columns out of position and badly damaged its bottom segment. A serious earthquake in 1981 damaged it further, and theentire column appeared at risk of toppling. The obvious procedure was to dismantle the column, one segment after another, and replace the crumbling section. Korres, hoping, he said, to avoid “even the smallest departure from the column’s perfection and authenticity of construction,” designed a metal collar that exerts precisely controlled forces to grasp a column securely without harming the stone. In the early 1990s, after the careful removal of the overhead blocks and lintels, the collar was suspended by turnbuckles (adjustable connectors) inside a mounted, rectangular steel frame. By tightening the turnbuckles, the team raisedthe 55-ton column less than an inch. They then removed the bottom segment—which they repaired with fresh marble to an accuracy of one-twentieth of a millimeter—and slid it back into position. Finally, they lowered the rest of the column into place on top of the repaired segment. “It was a bold decision to do it this way,” Korres says. “But we were young and daring then.”

Perhaps none of the Parthenon’s mysteries stirs more debate than the gentle curves and inclinations engineered throughout much of its design. There is hardly a straight line to be found in the temple. Experts argue over whether these refinements were added to counter optical illusions. The eye can be tricked, for instance, into seeing an unsightly sag in flat floors built under a perched roof like the Parthenon’s. Possibly to correct this effect, the Athenians laid out the Parthenon’s base so that the 228-by-101-foot floor bulges slightly toward the middle, curving gradually upward between 4 and 4 1/2 inches on its left and right sides, and 2 1/2 inches on its front and back. One theory holds that this slight upward bulge was built simply to drain rainwater away from the temple’s interior. But that fails to explain why the same curvingprofile is repeated not only in the floor but in the entablature above the columns and in the (invisible) buried foundations. This graceful curve was clearly fundamental to the overall appearance and planning of the Parthenon.

And then there are the columns, which the Athenians built so that they bulged slightly outward at the center. This swelling was termed entasis, or tension, by Greek writers, perhaps because it makes the columns seemas if they are clenching, like a human muscle, under the weight of their load. Again, some scholars have long speculated that this design might compensate for another trick of the eye, since a row of tall, perfectlystraight-sided pillars can appear thinner at the middle than at the ends.

No matter the motivation for these refinements, many early scholars assumed that crafting such visual elements imposed tremendous extra demands on the Parthenon’s architects and masons. (One wrote of the “terrifyingcomplications” involved.) No architectural manuals survive from the Classical Greek era, but today’s experts suspect the temple builders could add curves and inclined angles with a few relatively simple surveying tricks. “If you’re building without mortar, every block...must be trimmed by hand,” notes Jim Coulton, professor emeritus of classical archaeology at Oxford University. “Although tilts and curvatures would require careful supervision by the architect, they don’t add a lot to the workload.”

Still, how could each column segment be measured so that all would fit together in a single, smoothly curving profile? The likely answer was found not in Athens but nearly 200 miles away in southwestern Turkey. In the town of Didyma rises one of the most impressive relics of the ancient world, the Temple of Apollo. Three of its 120 colossal columns still stand, each nearly twice the height of the Parthenon’s. The wealthy trading city of Miletus commissioned the temple in the age of Alexander the Great, around 150 years after completion of the Parthenon. The gigantic ruins testify to a project of grandiose ambition: it was never finished despite 600 years of construction efforts. But thanks to its unfinished state, crucial evidence was preserved on temple walls that had not yet undergone their final polishing.

A few years after the Parthenon restoration began, University of Pennsylvania scholar Lothar Haselberger was on a field trip exploring the Temple of Apollo’s innermost sanctuary. He noticed what seemed to be patterns of faint scratches on the marble walls. In the blinding morning sunlight the scratches are all but invisible, as I discovered to my initial frustration when I searched for them. After the sun had swung around and began grazing the surface, however, a delicate web of finely engraved lines started to emerge. Haselberger recalls, “All of a sudden I spotted a series of circles that corresponded precisely to the shape of a column base, the very one at the front of the temple.” He realized he had discovered the ancient equivalent of an architect’s blueprint.

Then, just above the outline of the column base, Haselberger noticed a pattern of horizontal lines with a sweeping curve inscribed along one side. Could this be related to entasis, also evident in the towering Didyma columns? After carefully plotting the pattern, the answer became clear: it was a profile view of a column with the vertical dimension—the height of the column—reduced by a factor of 16. This scale drawing must have been a key reference for the masons as they carved out one column segment after another. By measuring along the horizontal lines to the edge of the curve, they would know exactly how wide each segment would have to be to create the smooth, bulging profile. Manolis Korres believes that the ancient Athenians probably relied on a carved scale drawing similar to the one at Didyma in building the columns of the Parthenon.

Haselberger also traced a labyrinth of faint scratches covering most of the temple’s unfinished surfaces. The lines proved to be reference drawings for everything from the very slight inward lean of the walls to details of the lintel structure supported by the columns. There were even floor plans, drafted conveniently right on the floor. As the temple’s stepped platform rose, each floor plan was copied from one layer to thenext. On the topmost floor, the builders marked out the positions of columns, walls and doorways.

The discoveries at Didyma suggest that the temple builders operated on a “plan-as-you-go” basis. “Clearly, a lot of advance planning went into a building like the Parthenon,” Coulton says. “But it wasn’t planning inthe sense that we’d recognize today. There’s no evidence they relied on a single set of plans and elevations drawn to scale as a modern architect would.”

Still, the Parthenon remains something of a miracle. The builders were steered by tradition, yet free to experiment. They worked to extreme precision, yet the final result was anything but rigid. A commanding building, with supple and fluid lines, emerged from a blend of improvised solutions.

But the miracle was short-lived. Only seven years after the construction of the Parthenon was completed, war broke out with Sparta. Within a generation, Athens suffered a humiliating defeat and a devastating plague.The story of the Parthenon resembles an ancient Greek tragedy, in which an exceptional figure suffers a devastating reversal of fortune. And from Korres’ perspective, that calamity is all the more reason to restore the greatest remnant of Athens’ golden age. “We wanted to preserve the beauty of what has survived these past 2,500 years,” he says. “A reminder of man’s power to create, as well as to destroy.”


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Comments (57)

how did they build 1Parthenon, Acropolis and why did they build it?

Posted by bob on May 28,2013 | 11:21 PM

Any student can read from ancient history that the ancient Greeks, including Macedonians & people of now western Turkey, (Troy, etc)moved in to this region about 1000 b.c., and all history knows that these became that "Greek Civilization" that built these stupendous buildings...To say Greeks did NOT build the Parthenon on the Acropolis simply reveals ignorance of the known "moves" of past history Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/Unlocking-Mysteries-of-the-Parthenon.html#ixzz2QdJGh4PC Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter

Posted by player formely known as mousecop on April 16,2013 | 09:33 AM

Any student can read from ancient history that the ancient Greeks, including Macedonians & people of now western Turkey, (Troy, etc)moved in to this region about 1000 b.c., and all history knows that these became that "Greek Civilization" that built these stupendous buildings...To say Greeks did NOT build the Parthenon on the Acropolis simply reveals ignorance of the known "moves" of past history.

Posted by Victor Carroll on February 27,2013 | 02:29 AM

but how did they raise and set the lintels and roof on this monumental structure ??

Posted by WD Jones on January 1,2013 | 09:06 PM

I first visited the Acropolis and the Parthenon in 1975; when my first action was to get down on my knees, at the north-west corner of the stylobate (i.e. the 3 steps at the base of the building); and look along the top step. Immediately, I saw the gentle and subtle curvature of the top step, measuring about 4" (100 mm), in a total length of around 220 ft (66m). Although I had (and still have) a detailed knowledge of this sublime piece of architecture, I was overwhelmed by the sheer scale, or magnitude, of those magnificent 34 ft (10.36m) high fluted Doric Order columns, supportinmg the massive, yet refined superstructure of the entablature, with what remains of the east and west pediments (i.e. gables). It should be remembered that the Parthenon was built, not only as a shrine to the goddess of war and wisdom, the virgin goddess, Athena: it was also designed as a framework, or architectural setting for the superb sculptures of Pheidias; and for this reason, it was he who was appointed by Pericles, the leader of Athens, to act as a veritable 'project manager'. As we see the Parthenon now: stripped of most of its sculpture, and open to the sky; the building is a shadow of its former sublime glory. But it need not be so. Obviously, there is a convincing case to be made for its complete restoration; and for the return of the Parthenon sculptures of Pheidias, in the temple built for them, under sunny Attic skies. If this were done, this could be a convincing argument in favour of returning the Parthenon sculptures to their true home, in that non-pareil of edifices: the temple of the virgin goddess Athena, protectress of the city which bears her name : Athens.

Posted by Peter Hancock, PhD on October 9,2012 | 07:47 AM

It's obvious that ancient greeks didn't build it they may have moved into this area long after the disaster which befell the civilization that did. our understanding of ancient greeks clearly demonstrates they were not capable of building such a structure. they only attempted to rebuild what was already there

Posted by Robert Parker on September 21,2012 | 12:47 PM

I want to know how old the builders had to be and what the most specific replica of the workers qualification sheet.

Posted by reavo darmini on March 25,2012 | 08:03 PM

why is the Parthenon a mystery it's just a building that people built.

Posted by ruben gallegos on March 22,2012 | 12:32 PM

I think that the artifacts should be returned to Greece. Fiirst of all they never rightfully belonged to the British even if they say it was "legal". its not fair to just take what you want. Second of all the grece obviously care about the Eligin Marbles if they are making a big deal to get them back.Third, if a Greek wants to see what their past ancestors created with their own two hads are they expected to go all the way to England? I know i would be a litttle upset if i had to do that. I think that the artifacts rightful owners are the Greeks.

Posted by madison on November 27,2011 | 07:35 PM

Well what I wont to konw is what yeare the public building that was biullt that looked simieller to the biulding that looked like dering the Anciant Greek Architecture was biullt so what public building in washington D.C.modeled after the parthenon I guess what was it???............

Posted by Crystle .S. Hendricks on June 22,2011 | 10:43 PM

great article i love reading about the greatest ancient building of all time, makes me feel proud of my Greek heritage. Can't wait to see it restored in all its glory.

Posted by penny on February 26,2011 | 03:06 AM

It would be awesome fantastic to restore the parthenon and all the other major temples on the Acropolis completely. The stabilazation is almost complete PLEASE RESTORE AND RE-ROOF THIS breathtaking building and all the temples of the Acropolis, an example of the genius of Humanity.

Posted by Johannim on February 11,2011 | 12:56 PM

I really love this article and it helped me a lot thank you so much! I also want to say that you should write about more subjects!

Posted by Alise on January 18,2011 | 05:58 PM

thank u a lot
even though i did go to Greece and saw the Parthenon
i never knew about these facts
very interesting; when korea was a colony of japan
they also destroyed a lot of korea's culture and so did china
i wish i could see the parthenon all reconstructed next time!

Posted by Rebecca Kim on January 11,2011 | 03:57 AM

Thank you for a most interesting article and wonderful photos and description of a truely GREAT building. I was there in 1972 as a young adult and I was truely awestruck then and will look with interest at the same building when I return soon in the passing 38 yeare I am sure the restoration will be just astonishing. I look forward to another visit soon. A great project well done everyone on the restoration.

Posted by Michael Gavaghan on November 20,2010 | 02:46 AM

thanx alot cuz im doin a project and i need info on da parthenon alot of info thanx

Posted by shabreeya collins on June 15,2010 | 05:07 PM

I just got around to reading the article and enjoyed it very much as I do all the articles. It reminded me again of all the things I'd like to research if I actually had free time. I take exception to the Mr Coulter's conclusions about the "plan as you go" and "it wasn't planning we would recognize today". Clearly he has never been on a job site. Unless there is more that you did not put in the article, there was nothing surprising to me. In fact I felt connected to the Greek builders. This is exactly how we use "precise planning" and "plan as you go". Only the materials are different. I used chalk lines, crayons, and markers to tell my framers where to put walls, doors, and windows. I even mark out dimensions for arches and other details. Then the plumbing and electrical foreman come in and mark their details, followed by the drywallers, siding and painters. Eventually, these all get covered by flooring, texture and paint, which is why you don't see them in your house or place of work. Often times things don't work out just right or the architect or owner change their mind about a detail. Depending on when this takes place I may mark it on the floor or if it's already built we just get to work and tear it apart and fix it with no record anywhere of the change...a sort of "plan-as-you-go" technique. As for their blueprints, well the plans for many builings built in the last century have been lost or destroyed. Since we have found and recognized detailed financial records, I'm sure their blueprints would be surprisingly similar to ours today.

Posted by Jim Crowley on May 6,2010 | 10:35 AM

Thank you for the good article.Before I read it,I know nothing about the Parthenon temple,let alone the mysteries.But I learnt a lot by the article.And the Parthenon temple is very amazing and beautiful.I want to go there some time.

Posted by Hu Tianqi on October 25,2009 | 11:28 AM

From the article,I learned the fantastic parthenon.We could not know how the flutes in the columns were accomplished,we could not know how the ancient people build it without power equipment.These made the parthenon amazing and mysterious.And it made me think of the pyramid,the great wall.All these architectures are marvels.They reflect the intelligence, dedication, perfection, diligence of the anchient people.I was totally inspired, and I hope I could go to the Greek to see it.

Posted by MaYan on October 25,2009 | 09:33 AM

Thank you very much for telling us so much about the Parthenon.Now I have a knowlege of the reconstruction of the Parthenon.I think it's a great loss for human to destroy it.The old architectures are a precious treasure for us and it can make a big contribution to our culture.So we must enact laws to protect them and know more about our hisory.thank you very much.

Posted by HouMengyi on October 24,2009 | 01:52 AM

Thank you for this article. In the past, I knew nothing about the parthenon—the apotheosis of ancient Greek architecture and it makes me know more about the architecture. As the article says, the Parthenon represents “the supreme effort of genius in pursuit of beauty” and it is really amazing because the Athenians managed to incorporate subtle visual elements into the Parthenon’s layout and achieve such faultless proportions and balance, besides, the builders was able to work at a level of precision without the benefit of modern tools! Maybe nowadays modern people could not create such fantastic architecture. Moreover, Builders have worked a lot of complex math into many clever and simple ways to achieve complex results. As to me , I think The Parthenon sculptures are unique in the world of ancient Greek art treasures and This temple Undergo 2000 years of vicissitudes , now top of the temple has collapsed, the statue disappeared, relief of serious erosion, but the government is helping it. I hope that all new generations should support this project and I hope the restoration could be finished successfully. I expect other architectures like this could be supported as well so that we could learn more about our ancient ancestors’ wisdom better!

Posted by Zheng Haotian (2220081609) on October 24,2009 | 08:41 AM

Thank you for this good article. I knew nothing about the parthenon—the apotheosis of ancient Greek architecture in the past.I used to think that our Chinese is the best because we have the Great Wall,the Forbidden City,the Summer Place and so on. But now, I think I should not worship something just because I'm Chinese .People in different countries have made their own wonders by their own hands.We need to prise highly of those things.Just like the parthenon,we learn the spirits of dedication ,intelligence,perfection,diligence.All of these also is the symbol of civilization.And we ,people of the whole world , should make our great efforts to protect all of these things in the world.

Posted by GuZhenni on October 23,2009 | 08:36 AM

I have heard the Parthenon before and I think this building is so beautiful at that time.I am full of curisity that in their time when architecture wasn't improved as nowdays,how could they match the stones so perfect?It cost them 8-9 years to finish the Parthenon.8-9 years!It isn't a short time.They made it all by their hands instead of some modern machines,their determination moves me a lot.The building is an amazing,but it's a pity that it had been destroyed a lot.The wound on the Parthenon is history.The wound on the Parthenon makes it more heavy in people's history.

Posted by lili on October 22,2009 | 12:50 PM

Good article!

Posted by Fey on October 21,2009 | 07:42 AM

Thank you for this article!It makes me know more about the ancient Greek architecture .As the article says Parthenon represents “the supreme effort of genius in pursuit of beauty".From my standpoint ,what's more,it represents diligence and intelligence of ancient people.I think as the technology develops, we will complete the restoration soon.
Through the article,I also get something useful to daily life.I think not only I but also others should work hard ,never give up and make the best use of our intelligence .And then we will make our own mysteries someday!

Posted by Zhang Lei on October 21,2009 | 07:34 AM

The parthenon—the apotheosis of ancient Greek architecture is one of the greatest architectures in the world.But in the eyes of my,as some others' comments,The intelligence, dedication, perfection, diligence and care of the anchient people is inspiring! We cann't imagine how the ancient people could use their intelligences to finish this gteat architecture.As the topic says,it is a mystery.We love the beaties and the mesteries of the parthenon,and we must thank the ancient people.It is them who create this mystery.

Posted by Qiao Shijia on October 18,2009 | 12:39 AM

I knew the Parthenon is a great architecture of and a symbol building of the west civilization before.When I read this article,I was amazed by the courage of the Greek government,the archaeologists, architects and civil engineers to restore the Parthenon.Moreover,I was moved by their efforts to finish such a difficult project.I think the restoration of the Parthenon isn't only the benifit of Greek,but also the benefit of the whole world civilization.
Providing that I have the chance and ability to support this project,I will do it undoubtedly.I advocate here that all people in differnt fields should support this project.And i hope the restoration could be finished successfully.

Posted by YuanPan on October 18,2009 | 12:38 AM

Thank you so much for this article,let me know more about the Parthenon. The Parthenon sculptures are unique in the world of ancient Greek art treasures.This temple Undergo 2000 years of vicissitudes , now top of the temple has collapsed, the statue disappeared, relief of serious erosion, but you can also see the temple Fengzi year.
We can see that the destruction of the temple was severely.Not only the Parthenon ,China's Summer Palace and the Temple of Dunhuang Mogao Caves have also been serious damage. Why?Why do good things to be destroyed?There are some natural factors ,but the human damage is the most serious.Therefore, we have to call the international community to enact laws to protect the common heritage of mankind.We should prevent them from being destroyed by war.This is our common goal.

Posted by He Yanwei on October 18,2009 | 09:43 AM

With the exception of the Great Pyramid in Egypt, the Parthenon of Athens has probably received more attention from archaeologists, historians, architects, painters and poets than any other structure on earth. Words and photographs however, can offer but slight tribute to this extraordinary creation. It is the supreme expression of the ancient Greek architectural genius. With its incomparable setting, the visual harmony deriving from its sacred geometry, and the enduring wisdom of its resident deity, the goddess Athena, the Parthenon exercises a profound and lasting effect upon the human soul. The current author has visited the Parthenon numerous times since he was a young boy and honors the site as having had a major influence on his style of photographic composition. The architectural form of the temple of Athena represents the quintessential marriage of simplicity and power, and the photographs in this book are an expression of gratitude for a lesson so wondrously taught.

Posted by Yin Wei on October 18,2009 | 09:05 AM

Amazing, just amazing. I almost can't imagine how it was built,it is beyond my wildest dreams.It is really a great work in the human history.Almost every country has its own civilization,so does Greek and China.China alao has many great works in the long history,such as The Great Wall,The Fobidden City and so on,they are all great.And from the article and other similar articles,we can conclude that we human beings are really great!

Posted by Li wenping(Edward) on October 17,2009 | 12:15 AM

they found out many techniques about how the construction was accomplished. but it was not all. parthenon still has some secret. at any way... I have no much interest about ancient construct... so, this article isn`t fascinate me and also, i couln`t understand much.. This article mentioned a japanise sword. this sword made by fold-iron skill. this skill was kind of blacksmith`s know-how whose very superior, talented and experienced blacksmith. So, I think they had secret know-how and constructed when they construct parthenon. It should discorvering soon.

Posted by Suh shin on October 17,2009 | 03:03 AM

Thank you for this article. From the Internet I know that organizations from many countries have joined the International Association for the Reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures. I wish the reconstruction of Parthenon will be completed soon!

Posted by Lv Xin on October 16,2009 | 01:21 AM

I watch the secret of parthenon video and i think that at the time they build structure as per example the one column is divide it into pcs. as they call drum's etc., when they finish one column w/c each pieces has significant high, diameter,size and design so in order to produce a same high, diameter, size and design, they make a replicate each pieces so they can construct one column that can copy to original set of column identically as same pieces with same design. And i think each drum is identical per level of the column so the ancient is wise to copy each pieces so it will perfectly align in high or in column.So each drum is identical to the high of each level of the column.Also add i think ancient greek has a plan for that building so they know marble is heavy that's why i think they build it into pieces respect to the different stage or level of construction before putting it in right and exact position.

Posted by jun davis on October 14,2009 | 01:12 PM

A comment on a comment: many thanks to Stephen O'Mara on his probably very illuminating connection made between the 'lofting' used by boatbuilders and the 'blueprints' at Didyma. The word 'lofting' is not in the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, the technique seems to be very little known outside naval architecture and may be of use in discovering more 'secrets of the Parthenon.'

Posted by Rosemary ind on September 23,2009 | 07:33 AM

The Athenians were arrogant and cruel to their "allies", extorting money from them and twice wiping out whole populations of cities. Their disatrous reverses in the Peloponnesian War and in their invasion of Sicily might be seen as fitting justice. Their actions go far to sully the reputation based on their incredible artistic achievements.

Socrates was a mason and stone-cutter when he bothered to work rather than spend his days talking philosophy in the marketplace. I wonder if there is any evidence whether he was a skilled stone-cutter or only a rough one.

Posted by Charles on September 17,2009 | 09:39 PM

thank'z for the idea

Posted by jeana on February 4,2009 | 10:23 PM

Finding this article really helped me out on my homework. I also found a lot of things that I didn't know. Now I know where to find things.

Posted by Debra Thomas on January 6,2009 | 08:29 PM

Optical illusion buildings in those days and the weight of the marbel to build the Parthenon and the Pyramids in Egypt and Peru. We all should change into the "Mason" religion thats how the Mason religion is refering to the Stonemasons of the Egyptian Pyramids & Ancient Greece.

Posted by Leo Veli on January 2,2009 | 06:23 AM

The article on the Parthenon has helped me tremendously with a couple of my reports for school. I am an Interior Design student at Davis College in Toledo, Oh.

Posted by Brian Townsend on December 16,2008 | 02:35 PM

Thank you for this wonderful article on the reconstruction of the Parthenon. It really brings to light the hard work and detail these masons have to do to bring the Parthenon back as close to its original state, and at the same time to conserve a part of history for future generations to enjoy.

Posted by Rebecca Griffin on June 17,2008 | 07:35 PM

Thank you for your fascinating and enlightenting article about the construction of the Parthenon. I recently traveled to Greece and was in awe of all I saw! I was so inspired by this fabulous architectural wonder, that I am researching how in the world it was ever built! Please email the volume # as I need it for proper citing. Thank you for sharing this information! Trish Malloy

Posted by Patricia J. Malloy on April 30,2008 | 01:25 PM

hey, does ANYONE KNOW THE VOLUME NUMBER FOR THIS ISSUE? i NEED it for documentation in a paper for school.

Posted by student. on April 21,2008 | 08:51 PM

IT is indeed really fascinating and exhilarating to read about the details of the arcitectoral marvels as also the construction tecniques of the ancients.The comparison with the details available regarding the plans made (to scale) suggest great ingenuity and foresight.Thanks for the infor- mative article.It has been a great pleasure.

Posted by V.Rajagopalan on April 4,2008 | 02:09 PM

Ah, a wonderfully written piece. Having traveled to Athens this past Spring on business-and having just finished this piece- I am drenched in the nostalgia of walking the Acropolis and marveling at the magnificense of the Parthenon as I stood in her shadow. We have nothing on the ancient Athenians. I laud this restoration- and all others-and thank you for taking me back to Greece with your writing. We are, indeed, what our past made us.....

Posted by Salvatore Davi on March 25,2008 | 04:57 PM

I really enjoyed this article. It is another prime example of how far technology has gone to make the human species less ingenuitive and more reliant on machines and pre-determined expectations.

Posted by Shawn Woolsey on March 6,2008 | 02:09 PM

i think it should tell when it was finished being built because that is what i want to know

Posted by Jane Brasey on March 2,2008 | 11:39 AM

It would be interesting to make a documentary on most and the "best" ruins of old Macedonia, Greece and Turkey; to really study these great architects. Greece deserves an exegetical thesis on this subject. We would find so much more, that we don't know... How much do we owe to them...

Posted by Luis Bustamante Augspurg on February 25,2008 | 04:21 PM

I have never seen a word written about how the flutes in the columns were accomplished. Having spent endless hours trying to find something on the internet to help me with this mystery, i'm about to conclude that perhaps we don't really know. The flutes had to vary in width from top to bottom because of the entasis in each column. If indeed nobody has this information that's OK also. It just adds to the fascinating mystery and I can spend more hours in my search. Jerry Phillips

Posted by Jerry Phillips on February 18,2008 | 10:32 AM

i love the picture its awesome

Posted by Tristin on February 12,2008 | 03:30 PM

Thank you for the wonderful effort in describing this architectural wonder. As I have witnessed the castles built in Europe and the walls and structures in Asia, this structure in particular grabs my interest in the methods used by the ancients in moving such weight and volume with obvious precision. I am in absolute awe of the accomplishment. Thank you

Posted by Paul Kowack on February 9,2008 | 10:00 AM

I thoroughly enjoyed the article when my magazine arrived. I am very pleased to be able to view more pictures of the restoration work via the Smtithsonian online. Thank you very much!

Posted by Charles on February 9,2008 | 05:15 AM

Saw the Nova documentary the other night - wonderful. Fascinating to see what is being done after having the privilege of visiting the Parthenon last September. Thank you.

Posted by Lynne Kada on February 8,2008 | 11:09 AM

Was fasinated with picture in History book, 1945. Courtesy of USN did tour this area in 1953, and 1954; am still in awe of this ancient architecture.

Posted by Robert Kunkle on February 6,2008 | 12:24 PM

The intelligence, dedication, perfection, diligence and care of the anchient people is awe inspiring! Fred Meier

Posted by Fred J. Meier on February 5,2008 | 07:57 PM

Having been in the stone trade for 40 years, I have an abiding respect for the craftwokers of the time.We do our job with the help of our modern technoligy. Same tools,different power source.I have yet to walk into a modern,glass and steel structure and feel the same feeling that a stone building gives me.I have ofton wondered if governments ,2500 years from now,will look at our new buildings,and find the same feeling invoked as the Acropolis gives us today.It`s stone.It`s eternal,warm and inviting.As for strong,it has been defaced,endured fire,earthquakes,gunpowder and indifferent, so called, restoration. It`s still with us.Do you remember the story of the three little pigs?

Posted by Thomas Kimble on February 4,2008 | 03:25 PM

Haselberger's recognition of the pattern of lines and curve on the base of the column caught my eye. His description of how that pattern provided the builders with the base measurements to accurately "draw" the dimensions of each segment of the column is much alike to the lofting used to build a boat. With a few lines drawn and base measurements, it is possible to "draw" the dimensions of the boat, accurately and in three-dimensions, which can then be transformed into the real thing. Builders have worked a lot of complex math into many clever and simple ways to achieve complex results.

Posted by Stephen O'Mara on February 1,2008 | 03:46 PM

In May of 2007 I was in Athens and of course every time I visit I return to the Acropolis. This time was memorable. Went to the Herodian Theater atop the acropolis to hear the Opera Carmen. As we were waling down and by the new museum{which of course had not opened as yet} I looked over to the museum and the large glass windows you could see the reflection of the Pathenon all lit up in it's front. It just sent chills up my spine and was the perfect ending to a memorable evening. Upon my return to Athens this spring the first activity on my agenda will be to vist the pathenon and the new museum. The article was terrific.

Posted by Eugenia Dascalos on February 1,2008 | 02:27 PM

Having recently seen the History Channel's program about the prospects of our modern architecture lasting after we're gone, the Greeks are even more amazing.

Posted by Annette Gitre on February 1,2008 | 09:38 AM

Amazing, just amazing. I read the article in the magazine and then checked out the website for further info. If I had the money, I would pay for the entire project - how important it is! And so stunning that we struggle to solve the mystery of how they built such a structure in such a short time.

Posted by Kara on January 31,2008 | 12:51 PM

OK, so they found out many techniques about how the construction was accomplished. I find it interesting that nothing was discussed about their lack of cranes to lift, transfer, and set these blocks so delicately into place as was done by the restorers! That would be important to know also.

Posted by Darryl on January 30,2008 | 10:34 AM

Was at the Parthenon in August or September of 1972. Am pleased to see that cconstruction restoration is being im- plemented on such a monumental ande world-renowned Greek treasure.

Posted by Neil Cook on January 30,2008 | 03:42 AM

Congratulations. Splendid. Compulsory reading for all budding architects building in Lego, and anyone else purporting to be civilized.

Posted by Humphrey Waldock on January 29,2008 | 09:39 PM

I too was Simply fasinated with this article. As the grandson of a stone mason I own a small firm that often meets chalenges of older buildings and wonder how the workers were able to build with such measurments and detail.Great stuff, I look forward to more of the same.

Posted by Clarence S. Dungey on January 29,2008 | 09:00 PM

Thanks for posting this article, I saw the program tonight! Fascinating, I hope to visit some day!

Posted by Todd on January 29,2008 | 09:00 PM

Thank you so much for this article. I've long been fascinated with ancient architecture, but really know little about it. This opened new doors of knowledge to me.

Posted by Barb Conway on January 29,2008 | 11:08 AM



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