"The
Greeks were gods!" Henry Fuseli, Swiss painter, on seeing the Marbles.
Part One: The Construction of Parthenon
After their victory against the Persians at Plataea in 479BC
the Athenians returned to their abandoned city and found all the buildings on
the Acropolis had been laid waste.
Pericles wanted to rebuild the
city and make it an artistic and cultural as well as political hellenic centre.
During the thirty years of Pericles' rule, many buildings were erected like the
Parthenon, the Propylaea and many others.
The general artistic supervision
of the Acropolis buildings was assigned to Pheidias who distinguished himself
by producing decorations that were unique in magnificence.
In 439BC the Parthenon was
dedicated to the goddess Athena and it took 15 years to complete. This is a
remarkably short time when one considers the principles of architecture
employed, some of which are still unknown to us.
In 450AD the Parthenon was turned
into a Christian church dedicated to the Virgin Mary, but in 1204, when the
Franks occupied Athens they turned the Parthenon into a Catholic church and
when the Turks arrived in 1458 the Parthenon became a mosque with Turkish
houses built around it.
In 1674, the French ambassador,
the Marquis de Nointel, paid a visit to Athens accompanied by Jacques Carrey
who made drawings of the Parthenon. Carrey's drawings show that at that time
the Parthenon still remained intact.
Thirteen years later, in 1687, the
Venetian general Francesco Morosini laid siege to the Acropolis. He bombarded
the Acropolis, even though he knew that the Turks were storing gunpowder there.
The result was an explosion which destroyed much of the Parthenon.