The Parthenon, in Athens, Greece, was a temple built in the honour of the Greek Goddess of wisdom, Athena.

It was Pericles, leader of Athens from 461 to 429 BC, who proposed building a majestic new temple to the city’s patron Goddess, Athena. Athens was the centre of an empire, and Pericles was determined that some visible symbol of it wealth and influence to be erected. The temple housed a magnificent gold and ivory statue of Athena. It also served as a treasury of the empire.

During 1687, the Turks occupied Athens. The Italian troops led by Venetian general Francesco Morosini besieged the Turkish troops. They shelled the Turkish positions heavily. Unfortunately, one shell landed on the ammunition and gunpowder store. The store itself was kept within the walls of Parthenon. Once the shell landed on the gunpowder store, it exploded. Even though the Turks were defeated, the Parthenon was in ruins.

It is a ruin till date. Some of the sculptures were lost forever when collectors ransacked the site in 18^th and 19^th centuries. Many more sculptures lie in museums throughout Europe. Yet what still stands on the Acropolis, visible for miles around, remains an awe-inspiring monument to the golden age of the ancient Greece.

The Parthenon consists of three basic parts: a colonnade on all four sides, the roof with its triangular pediments at each end, and a central room called the naos. The naos was divided into two parts: one for the statue of Athena, the other for the treasury.

Such a formal arrangement of triangles and repeated triangles could easily have ended up looking rigid and lifeless. But the architectural shape of the Parthenon is unique. The horizontals on all four sides curve up slightly at the centre. The columns lean inward and are unevenly shaped. All are slightly larger at the centre than at the base and taper gently at the top. These refinements not only soften the lines of the building but also enhance the grandeur of the Parthenon for the viewer standing at ground level.

One of the most astonishing features of the Parthenon is barely visible from the ground. The perfectly detailed, brilliantly coloured sculptures that decorated the outside.

The pediment at one end depicted the birth of Athena, who sprang fully formed and fully armed from the head of Zeus, her father and king of gods. The other illustration depicts the contest between Poseidon and Athena for the loyalty of the city.

There were two distinct series of sculptures. Metopes, 92 square panels above the columns and the frieze, which ran along the top of the walls of the naos. These were the works of Phidias, the sculptor who also created the statue of Athena within the temple.

The metopes depicted four symbolic battles in which men or gods defeated various agents of disorder and barbarism in the shape of centaurs, giants, Amazons, and Trojans. The frieze depicted the great procession that took place every four years in the honour of Athena.

Phidias’ great contribution to the Parthenon was the 33-foot statue of Athena. It stood in the naos and cost nearly twice as much as the rest of the temple. Athena’s flesh was rendered in ivory, her eyes were precious stones, her clothing of gold. In one hand, she held a gold statue of Victory. At her feet, a pool of water reflected her glory.

All work was completed by 432 BC, just 16 years after the Athenians had decided to build the temple. Blocks of marble, each of which took 300 working days to cut and deliver, were transported from quarries 10 miles outside Athens and hauled up on the steep sides of Acropolis. Winches, pulleys and cranes swung the stones and sculptures into place, on to the top of the Acropolis.

The walls contained no mortar. Each stone was cut to fit exactly. Central pins held sections of the columns together, and masons carved the characteristic fluting once each column was complete.

For nearly a thousand years the Parthenon stood in all its splendour, although every trace of the great statue of Athena had vanished by early in the sixth century. When the Christians arrived in the seventh century, they converted the building into a church. In the 15^th century the invading Turks made it into a mosque and set up the arsenal within its walls, leading to the shell landing into the arsenal and ruining the Parthenon.

Although the Parthenon is in ruins today, this astonishing temple can still take one’s breath away.