1. Parthenon
The Parthenon was a temple to Athena built on top of the highest hill in Athens, the Acropolis (Acropolis means High City). In the Late Bronze Age, the Acropolis had been where the kings of Athens lived (like Theseus in the myth), and where everybody went to defend themselves when there was a war. But after the Dark Ages, the Athenians had no more kings to rule them. Instead they had an oligarchy, and so there was no king to live on the Acropolis. Instead, the Acropolis became sacred to the goddess Athena, and the Athenians built her a temple there.

3. There was at least one Parthenon on that spot before the one that is there now. It was built in the Archaic period out of limestone. The Persians destroyed this first temple when they sacked Athens in the Persian Wars, just before the battle of Salamis in 480 BC. We have only scraps of it that were buried on the Acropolis after the war.

4. For a long time after the Persian Wars, the Athenians left the Acropolis in ruins, as a sort of war memorial. But by the 440’s BC, a generation later, they wanted to rebuild their Parthenon bigger and better than before.

5. To get the money for this new, big, beautiful temple, the Athenians used the tribute money from their allies, that was supposed to be spent defending the Greeks from Persian invasions.

6. The Athenians hired two great architects, Callicrates and Ictinus,
and a great sculptor, Pheidias,
to rebuild the Parthenon. This time the whole building would be made of marble, and in the very latest style, and big, too.

7. Differences of Parthenon
Eight columns instead of the usual six
Presence of both frieze (a continuous band of sculpture) and metopes (individual panels)‏
Both Doric Column (thicker and shorter, capital has the simplest design) and Ionic Column (taller and slimmer, capital has curlicues called volutes)‏

9. Doric
Ionic

10. No effort would be spared to make the building beautiful
No effort would be spared to make the building beautiful. Callicrates and Ictines wanted their Parthenon to seem to float, so they made the whole thing curve slightly upward to the middle, so it almost looks like it is trying to take off into the air.

11. And they knew that if you make the columns straight, an optical illusion makes them look thinner in the middle, so they made their columns a little thicker in the middle, so the columns would appear to be straight.

13. On the front of the Parthenon, in the triangular pediment, Pheidias carved the contest between Athena and Poseidon to be the main god of the city of Athens, and on the back pediment he put the birth of Athena out of the head of her father Zeus. Neither of these pediments is in good shape now. There are only pieces of the sculptures left, and they are in museums, not on the Parthenon itself, as you can see.

15. On the metopes, just under the roof, Phidias carved the battle between Lapiths (men) and centaurs (the Centauromachy), Greeks against Amazons (Amazonomachy), the gods against the giants (the Gigantomachy) and the sack of Troy.

16. All these stories show the greatness of the Greeks and of men and civilization in general, and how men and gods are able to beat anybody who fights them – giants, centaurs, Trojans, or women (Amazons are women).

17. On the frieze, Pheidias carved a long procession of Athenians, with girls in the front, bringing a new dress for the goddess Athena to her temple.
Most of the carving was done in a beautiful new style, where all the figures moved very gracefully, and the clothes were floating and very thin, almost transparent, so that you could see all the muscles and tendons of the women wearing them.

21. Inside the temple, Pheidias carved a huge statue of Athena made out of gold and ivory (chryselephantine). (The statue’s not there anymore; it was melted down to get the gold eventually. This is an artist's idea of what it might have looked like).

22. The Parthenon stood as the great glory of Athens and Athena for eight hundred years. When the Athenians converted to Christianity about 400 AD, they made their Parthenon into a Christian church, and it continued to stand for another thousand years. But when the Ottomans took over Greece in the 1400’s AD, they weren’t so interested in Christian churches, because they were Muslims. The Parthenon began to fall into disrepair.

23. And then in the 1600’s, the Ottomans used the Parthenon to store ammunition in during a war against the Venetians. The Ottomans thought nobody would attack the Parthenon, so their ammunition was safe there. But it was accidentally set on fire and exploded, doing a lot of damage to the carvings and the roof.

24. In the 1700’s, an Englishman, Lord Elgin, bought some of the carvings from the Ottoman government and brought them back to England. Now they are in the British Museum. Many people feel the carvings should be returned to Athens; other people feel they should stay in England.