60 Fun Facts About Acropolis

What does the Greek word 'acropolis' mean?

Highest city. Greek towns grew up around a defensible hilltop, so many had an acropolis of their own; the one in Athens became so famous that it took over the word.

Cecrops, the legendary first king who gave the Acropolis its old name Cecropia, was shown as half man and half what?

Snake. Athenian artists gave Cecrops a man's body above the waist and a serpent's coiled tail below, fitting for a king said to have been born from the soil of Attica itself.

Which Athenian statesman launched the fifth-century BC building programme that gave the Acropolis the Parthenon?

Pericles. He paid for the work with money the allies had contributed for war against Persia, and his critics, Plutarch says, likened the city to a vain woman decking herself in jewels.

In Greek myth, which gift did Athena plant on the Acropolis to win the city as its patron?

An olive tree. In the usual telling her rival struck the rock and raised only a salt spring, so the olive was judged the better gift and the city became hers.

The massive Bronze Age wall around the Acropolis was built in which masonry style?

Cyclopean. Later Greeks could not believe that men had stacked boulders so huge, and credited walls like these to the Cyclopes, the giants of myth.

Why is an archaic temple from the Acropolis nicknamed the 'Bluebeard temple'?

Blue-bearded figures on its pediment: a winged, three-bodied monster with a long coiled tail. Its broken pieces were dug up beside the Parthenon in the 1880s and fitted back together, traces of paint and all.

After the Persian sack of 480 BC, what did Athenians do with the Older Parthenon's column drums?

Built them into the north wall, where the unfinished drums still show above the city: a reminder of the sack that the Athenians chose to keep in view.

Which sculptor oversaw the fifth-century BC rebuilding of the Acropolis and made its great statues of Athena?

Phidias made the bronze Promachos and the gold-and-ivory Parthenos. Accused of stealing the statue's gold, he is said to have cleared himself because the plates could be taken off and weighed.

Which Persian king's army burned the temples on the Acropolis in 480 BC?

Xerxes I's troops burned the Acropolis after most Athenians had been evacuated by sea, but the same year the Greek fleet smashed his navy at Salamis.

From which mountain was the marble for the Acropolis buildings quarried?

Mount Pentelicus marble holds traces of iron that oxidise over time, which is why the white temples of the Acropolis glow honey-gold at sunrise and sunset.

Tribute from which alliance of Greek city-states, led by Athens, helped pay for the Parthenon?

The Delian League began as a free alliance against Persia, but when the island of Naxos tried to leave, Athens forced it back in; soon the allies were subjects, and their dues were paying for temples.

Which Bronze Age people built the first palace and fortress wall on the Acropolis, long before the Parthenon?

The Mycenaeans. Almost nothing is left of their hilltop palace, but their wall, several metres thick, guarded the rock for centuries, and stretches of it can still be seen.

What is the name for the slight outward swelling built into the shafts of the Parthenon's columns?

Entasis. The temple's platform is curved as well, rising several centimetres toward the middle of each side, so its look of ruler-straight perfection is an illusion.

The gold-and-ivory Athena Parthenos inside the Parthenon is thought to have been built around a core of what?

Cypress wood, probably: the frame was timber that resists rot, and the gold was fixed to it in plates that could be lifted off again.

Thucydides records that Athens counted the gold on Athena's statue as a reserve for its coming war with which rival?

Sparta. As the invasion of 431 BC loomed, Athenians were told the statue's forty talents of gold could be taken off and spent, provided every bit was put back afterwards.

Sailors rounding Cape Sounion were said to glimpse which part of the bronze Athena Promachos on the Acropolis?

Her spear point, and her helmet crest too, wrote the traveller Pausanias, who called the nine-metre bronze a tithe of spoils taken from the Persians.

The six maidens standing on the Acropolis's famous porch today are what?

Modern replicas. Five of the original maidens were moved indoors and now stand in the Acropolis Museum; the sixth was taken abroad in the early 1800s.

According to Vitruvius, columns carved as women recall which Peloponnesian town, punished for siding with Persia?

Caryae. Vitruvius says its women were enslaved and then carved bearing loads as a lasting disgrace, but scholars doubt the tale, because such figures were in use well before the Persian Wars.

The temple with the caryatid porch housed a cult of which god, Athena's rival in the contest for Athens?

Poseidon. Visitors were shown a well of sea water and a trident mark in the rock there, said to be the proof he offered for his claim to the land.

The small Temple of Athena Nike beside the Acropolis gateway is built in which architectural order?

Ionic. A carved frieze runs right round it: the gods gather over the door, and on the south side Greeks fight Persian horsemen, a battle from Athens's own history rather than from myth.

What happened to the Temple of Athena Nike in 1686?

The Ottomans dismantled it to build defences, packing its blocks into a wall; after Greek independence the pieces were dug out and the temple was put back together in the 1830s.

A famous relief from the parapet of the Athena Nike temple shows a winged goddess doing what?

Adjusting her sandal: she balances on one leg and reaches down, perhaps to slip it off, while her dress slides from her shoulder and clings as if wet.

Every four years the Great Panathenaea procession climbed the rock to present Athena with what?

A new woven wool robe, the peplos, made by women and girls chosen from the city; the Parthenon's frieze is thought to show the moment the folded cloth is handed over.

Herodes Atticus built the Odeon on the Acropolis's south slope in memory of whom?

His wife Regilla. She died pregnant after a beating by one of his freedmen; her brother charged Herodes with ordering it, he was acquitted in Rome, and the cedar-roofed hall followed.

Which invaders destroyed the Odeon of Herodes Atticus in AD 267 and prompted the building of the Beulé Gate?

The Heruli sailed down from the Sea of Azov and laid much of Athens waste before locals led by the historian Dexippus drove them off; the Acropolis was then walled in as a fortress again.

To whom was the Parthenon dedicated when it became a Christian church?

The Virgin Mary. Athena had been worshipped there as Parthenos, 'the maiden', and Greek Christians used the same word for Mary, so the building kept a virgin patron.

Under Ottoman rule, what was the temple with the caryatid porch reportedly used as?

The governor's private harem, or so a traveller reported in 1678; recent research doubts the story, because no Turkish record mentions it.

Whose artillery fired the shell that blew up the gunpowder stored in the Parthenon in 1687?

The Venetians', besieging an Ottoman garrison that kept its powder in the temple. Their commander Morosini then tried to carry off pediment statues as trophies and smashed them in the attempt.

The medieval Frankopyrgos on the Acropolis, demolished in 1875, was what?

A large tower beside the gateway, used over the centuries as a lookout, a salt store and a prison. It came down when later additions were being stripped away to leave only the classical ruins.

Which US city, nicknamed the Athens of the South, has a full-scale replica of the Parthenon?

Nashville put up its Parthenon for an 1897 exposition and later rebuilt it to last; inside stands a 13-metre recreation of the lost gold-and-ivory Athena.

In May 1941 Manolis Glezos and Apostolos Santas climbed the Acropolis to do what?

Tear down the Nazi flag, which German troops had raised a month earlier; the theft is remembered as one of the first acts of resistance in occupied Greece.

Which film star turned culture minister led Greece's 1980s campaign for the return of the Parthenon sculptures?

Melina Mercouri, famous abroad for Never on Sunday, became culture minister in 1981 and spent the decade pressing for the marbles to be sent home.

Which museum acquired the Elgin Marbles in 1816?

An 1816 Act of Parliament transferred them to the British Museum after a select committee found Elgin's acquisition legal.

Which poet likened Elgin's removal of the marbles to vandalism or looting?

Lord Byron. In 'The Curse of Minerva' he had the goddess herself lay a curse on Elgin, and he pressed the attack again in 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage', the poem that made him famous.

Lord Elgin, who removed the Parthenon sculptures, was held captive for three years by which country?

France. War broke out as he crossed the country on his way home and he was not let go until 1806; ten years later he sold the collection to the state for £35,000, about half of what it had cost him.

Glass floors in the Acropolis Museum let visitors look down on what?

An ancient neighbourhood: digging the foundations uncovered houses and workshops of Roman and early Byzantine Athens, so the building, opened in 2009, was raised on columns set between the ruins.

Which architect won the competition to design the new Acropolis Museum, opened in 2009?

Bernard Tschumi, working with the Greek architect Michael Photiadis, won the fourth competition, held in 2000; the first three had all come to nothing.

Why is the Acropolis Museum's top floor twisted?

To mirror the Parthenon: the top hall copies the temple's plan and compass bearing, so its sculptures face the way they did on the building, which visitors can see through the glass walls.

The Acropolis Restoration Project, begun in 1975, joins broken marble with clamps and dowels of which metal?

Titanium, because it does not rust. Earlier restorers pinned the marble with iron, which corroded and cracked the blocks it was meant to hold, so that work has had to be undone first.

What is the technical term for rebuilding a monument from its own original fragments, as used on the Acropolis?

Anastylosis. Each fallen block is identified and set back where it belonged, with new marble only where a piece is missing; the little Nike temple has now been taken down and rebuilt this way three times.

What was laid across the Acropolis summit by 2021 to help disabled visitors?

New reinforced concrete paths, poured while the site was shut during lockdown. They rest on a membrane, and the architect in charge said the whole surface could be lifted off again in a day.

Geologically, the Acropolis is an isolated block of which rock, resting on the softer Athens schist?

Limestone. Rain seeps down through its cracks until it meets the tighter rock beneath, which is why caves and springs ring the foot of the Acropolis.

The Clepsydra, the spring that supplied the Acropolis's defenders in the siege of 1826–27, shares its name with which ancient device?

A water clock. The Greek word means 'water thief', which suited a spring that ebbed out of sight as well as a clock that drained; in the 1820s the Greeks built a bastion just to guard it.

The Athenians began their first marble Parthenon in thanks for winning which battle against the Persians?

Marathon. The temple begun in thanks was still unfinished when the Persians came back ten years later and burned it; today's Parthenon stands on its platform.

Which god's cult was brought from Epidaurus to a new sanctuary below the Acropolis soon after Athens's great plague?

Asclepius, the healer. A carved pillar set up in the sanctuary tells how Telemachos fetched the god around 420 BC, with the plague still fresh in memory.

Not the Parthenon but which Acropolis temple housed the ancient wooden statue of Athena Polias?

The Erechtheion. Its small wooden Athena was said to have fallen from the sky, and Athenians counted it, not the gold-and-ivory colossus next door, the holiest thing in the city.

Which two architects built the Parthenon between 447 and 432 BC?

Ictinos and Callicrates. Ictinos went on to co-write a book about the temple, now lost, and is also credited with Apollo's lonely mountain temple at Bassae.

Besides being a temple, what practical role did the Parthenon serve for Athens and its allies?

Treasury. The building guarded the allies' tribute and the city's reserves, and some scholars doubt it was a working temple at all, since no altar from its own century has been found.

After the Ottoman conquest of the mid-15th century, what did the Parthenon become?

A mosque, complete with a minaret. After the explosion of 1687 wrecked it, a second, free-standing one was built inside the roofless ruin and stood there until 1843.

The Parthenon's unusually wide front makes it a rare mainland Greek example of which temple design?

Octastyle Doric: eight columns across each end where six was the rule, which gave room for an unusually broad hall inside to hold the colossal statue of Athena.

A small round temple set up in front of the Parthenon in Roman times honoured the goddess Roma and which emperor?

Augustus. The little temple was planted squarely on the line of the Parthenon's east door at a time of tension between Athens and Rome: imperial propaganda in marble.

The Parthenon's south metopes show the Lapiths fighting which mythical foes?

Centaurs. On other sides of the temple gods fight giants and Greeks fight Amazons; after the Persian wars, Athenians read such scenes as order beating chaos.

What is said to have set off gunpowder stored in the Propylaia?

Lightning, or so it is thought: the blast wrecked part of the gateway, which the Ottoman garrison was using as a powder magazine, and in 1687 the powder kept in the Parthenon went up in its turn.

The Propylaia's left-hand wing is called the Pinakotheke after what ancient visitors saw displayed inside?

Paintings: Pausanias saw panels of Odysseus and Achilles there. But the off-centre door suits a room lined with dining couches, so it may have been built for banquets and hung with pictures later.

The Temple of Athena Nike stands on a bastion beside the western gateway, at which corner of the Acropolis?

Southwest. The bastion began as a Bronze Age strongpoint set to overhang the right-hand side of anyone approaching the gate, which made the entrance easier to defend.

What does 'Nike' mean in the name of the Acropolis's Temple of Athena Nike?

Victory. The goddess's statue here had no wings, and Athenians said that was so victory could never fly away from their city.

In one legend, which king leapt to his death from the Acropolis on seeing his son's ship return under black sails?

Aegeus. His son Theseus had promised white sails if he survived the Minotaur, then forgot to hoist them; the Aegean Sea is traditionally said to be named after the grieving king.

The theatre on the Acropolis's south slope, where the plays of Sophocles and Aristophanes were first performed, honours which god?

Dionysus. Drama grew out of his spring festival in Athens, and every Greek tragedy and comedy that survives from the classical age was first staged on this hillside.

The rocky hill northwest of the Acropolis where ancient Athens tried murder cases is named after which god?

Ares. The Areopagus, 'hill of Ares', is where myth says the other gods put him on trial for killing a son of the sea god; Athens later tried its own murder cases on the same rock.

Which apostle's sermon in Acts 17 is set at the Areopagus?

The speech led to the conversion of Dionysius the Areopagite.