Parthenon, Ancient Greek temple on the Acropolis, Athens, Greece
The Parthenon is an ancient temple dedicated to Athena that crowns the Acropolis hill in central Athens. It rests on a three-stepped platform with 46 columns of pale marble arranged around an inner hall, which once contained a towering statue covered in gold and ivory.
Athenian leaders ordered construction in 447 BCE to replace an older temple destroyed by Persian armies in 480 BCE. The building served as a Christian church from the 6th century onward, then became a mosque in 1458 until a Venetian bombardment in 1687 ignited gunpowder stored inside and blew out much of the structure.
The name comes from parthénos, Greek for maiden or virgin, linked to Athena Parthenos. Each year four girls called arrephoroi wove a peplos presented to Athena at the Panathenaic festival. The building also held the treasury of the Delian League, moved to Athens in 454 BCE.
The Acropolis is entered from the west, and the climb passes the Propylaea gate before reaching the temple platform. Surfaces are worn marble and uneven rock, with no shade along the route. Restoration work since 1975 means scaffolding and closed sections can block parts of the circuit.
No line in the building is perfectly straight or level, though it appears so from a distance. The architects curved the floor slightly upward in the center and tilted every column inward by a few degrees to correct distortions the eye would otherwise create.
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