Travel to Greece: The Acropolis: Photo 11

On top, with the Parthenon on the right and the Erechtheion on the left. The space between was once crowded with monuments, including a giant statue of Athena. There were other images of her inside the temples, including a huge and hugely famous one inside the Parthenon and a crude but sacred one--hardly more than a dressed plank of olive wood--inside the Erechtheion. The rocky surface is the result of assiduous digging by mostly German archaeologists in the 19th century. They were working in a trans-European, philhellenic tradition marked, to take one important early case, by the publication in 1789 of Antiquities of Athens by James Stuart and Nicholas Revett, a book that launched Greek Revival architecture in England. The classical education that came along with it is long gone. Proof? Mary Beard (in The Parthenon, 2002)recounts a conservation between a newspaper reporter and Shaquille O'Neal. Q: "Did you visit the Parthenon during your trip to Greece?" A: "I can't really remember the names of the clubs we went to."

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Back to Greece: The Acropolis chapter

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