50 Fun Facts About Ancient Greek Architecture

What were Ottoman troops storing inside the Parthenon when a Venetian mortar round blew the temple apart in 1687?

Gunpowder wrecked a temple that had stayed basically intact for more than 2,000 years, even through its conversions into a church and a mosque.

How did Greek temples such as the Parthenon originally look, in contrast to the bare white marble seen today?

Brightly painted reds and blues once stood out against the white stone or stucco of a Greek temple. The idea of pure white classical buildings is a later, idealised image.

Which American city built a full-scale replica of the Parthenon as the centrepiece of an 1897 exposition?

Nashville called itself the 'Athens of the South', which is why the temple was chosen for Tennessee's Centennial Exposition. The replica now holds an art museum and a 42-foot statue of Athena.

The Greek gymnasium, a training ground for athletes and a place of learning, takes its name from a word meaning what?

Naked is the meaning of the Greek word gymnós, because athletes trained and competed without clothes. The same buildings later hosted lectures and discussions on philosophy and literature.

What name is given to the sculpted female figures that stand in place of columns on the Erechtheion's porch in Athens?

Caryatids take their name from the 'maidens of Karyai', a town in the Peloponnese. Six of them carried the porch roof in Athens, and one ended up in the British Museum.

Which order of Greek architecture, named after a region on the coast of Asia Minor, has capitals shaped like scrolls?

Ionic capitals carry a pair of spiral scrolls called volutes. The style grew up in the mid-6th century BC among the Greek cities of Ionia, on what is now the western coast of Turkey.

Which school of philosophy is named after the public colonnade in Athens where its founder, Zeno of Citium, taught?

Stoicism takes its name from the Stoa Poikile, a colonnade decorated with scenes of mythic and historical battles. Unlike his Epicurean rivals, Zeno chose to teach there in a public space.

Which Scottish earl had about half of the Parthenon's surviving sculptures removed and shipped to Britain from 1801?

Lord Elgin was Britain's ambassador to the Ottoman court and said he acted with its officials' permission. An 1816 act of Parliament transferred the marbles to the British Museum.

Which race of mythical giants gave their name to the massive boulder walls of Mycenae and Tiryns?

Cyclopes were, later Greeks assumed, the only beings strong enough to move such enormous boulders. The walls are in fact the work of Bronze Age Mycenaean builders.

Which landmark in the US capital, ringed by 36 Doric columns, did Henry Bacon design in the form of a Greek temple?

The Lincoln Memorial has one column for each of the 36 states in the Union when Abraham Lincoln died. Their names are inscribed above the colonnade.

Which plant's leaves are carved in rows around the capital of a Corinthian column?

Acanthus leaves, in a story the Romans told, were growing around a basket left on a girl's grave in Corinth when the sculptor Callimachus saw them and copied the shape in stone.

Which Roman emperor finally completed the colossal temple of Zeus in Athens, some 638 years after work on it began?

Hadrian, a devoted admirer of Greek culture, had the job finished as part of a building programme begun on his visit to Athens in 124–125 AD. Athenian tyrants had started the temple in the 6th century BC.

Which site in the Peloponnese has an ancient theatre for up to 14,000 spectators, renowned for its acoustics?

Epidaurus was a healing sanctuary of the god Asclepius, and the dramatic games staged in its theatre were part of his worship. Pausanias names the architect as Polykleitos the Younger.

The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, the tomb that gave English the word mausoleum, stood in which Turkish resort town?

Bodrum's castle is partly made of the wonder itself: crusader knights broke up what was left of the tomb of Mausolus and used the stones to strengthen their walls.

Which goddess was worshipped in the vast temple at Ephesus that ranked among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World?

Artemis lost an earlier temple on the site in 356 BC, when an arsonist, popularly named as Herostratus, set fire to its wooden roof beams in a bid for lasting fame.

What is the low triangular gable above the columns at each end of a Greek temple, often filled with sculpture, called?

Pediment sculpture reached its peak on the Parthenon, where both ends were filled with large groups of carved figures. Most of the survivors are now in the British Museum and the Acropolis Museum.

Which god's temple above the old marketplace of Athens stands largely intact, having served as a church until 1834?

Hephaestus was the patron of metalworking and craft, and potters' and metalworkers' shops clustered around his temple. From the 7th century it was the church of Saint George.

Which sanctuary on the slopes of Mount Parnassus held the Temple of Apollo, where the Pythia delivered her oracles?

Delphi was, to the Greeks, the centre of the world, a spot marked by a stone called the omphalos, their word for navel.

On which Mediterranean island does the Valley of the Temples preserve Greek Doric temples from ancient Akragas?

Sicily was part of Magna Graecia, the Greek-settled west. The valley's Temple of Concordia takes its name from a Latin inscription found nearby, not from anything the Greeks called it.

Which German landmark, built from 1788 to 1791, has a design based on the Propylaea of the Acropolis of Athens?

The Brandenburg Gate borrows the six Doric columns of the entrance to the Athenian citadel, and is crowned by a bronze quadriga by the sculptor Johann Gottfried Schadow.

What is the name for the outward swelling in the shaft of a Greek column, designed to counter an optical illusion?

Entasis keeps a column from looking as if its sides curve inward, and the bulge is so gentle that the shaft is never wider than its base.

What are the shallow vertical grooves that run down the shaft of a Greek column called?

Flutes on a Greek Doric column number twenty, each rising to a sharp edge called an arris, and the shaft drops straight onto the temple floor with no base.

What did the Greeks call the open public space at the heart of a city, used as a marketplace and meeting place?

Agora literally means 'gathering place' or 'assembly', and in modern Greek the word simply means market.

In an ancient Greek theatre, what was the circular floor where the chorus sang and danced called?

Orchestra literally means 'dancing place', and a chorus of 12 to 15 performed there in verse. The audience watched from the theatron, the 'seeing place' that gave us the word theatre.

Which god's sanctuary on the south slope of the Acropolis of Athens held the theatre where drama festivals were staged?

Dionysus was worshipped there as Eleuthereus, 'the Liberator', and his theatre began as a simple terrace laid out in the sixth century BC to host the City Dionysia festival.

Which goddess shares with Athena the small temple Callicrates designed beside the entrance to the Athenian Acropolis?

Nike was the goddess of victory, and Athena was worshipped there as victorious in war. Around 410 BC a parapet was added to stop visitors falling from the steep bastion the temple stands on.

The Parthenon's lost statue of Athena was chryselephantine, meaning made of gold and which other costly material?

Ivory, in thin carved slabs fixed to a wooden frame, stood for the goddess's skin, while sheets of gold formed her clothes, armour and hair.

Which invaders sacked Athens in 480 BC and razed the unfinished temple that the Parthenon later replaced?

Persians left the citadel in ruins, and the Athenians built column drums from the wrecked temple into its north wall as a reminder of the war, where they can still be seen.

Which Athenian statesman launched the building programme that gave the Acropolis the Parthenon and the Erechtheion?

Pericles began the project when the Acropolis became the seat of the Delian League, the alliance Athens led. The league's money was kept in the Parthenon's back room.

Which sculptor supervised the building of the Parthenon and made the colossal statue of Athena that stood inside it?

Phidias oversaw all the sculpture, but the great Athena is the only piece from the building known to be by his own hand, and it is now lost.

Which sanctuary in the Peloponnese held the temple whose giant seated statue of Zeus ranked among the Seven Wonders?

Olympia's hosts, the people of Elis, wanted to outdo their Athenian rivals, so they hired the sculptor of the Parthenon's Athena. The finished god sat about 12 metres tall.

Which animals are carved in relief above the main entrance of the Bronze Age citadel of Mycenae?

Lions, or perhaps lionesses, stand in a heraldic pose on what is the largest surviving sculpture of the Bronze Age Aegean, and the only such monument that never had to be dug out of the ground.

The Treasury of Atreus, a domed tomb at Mycenae, is also named after which legendary king who led the Greeks at Troy?

Agamemnon probably has nothing to do with it: the heroic names were attached around the 18th century, and no one knows who lay under what was the world's largest dome until Roman times.

The 'Greek key' border pattern is also known by the name of which winding river in Asia Minor?

Meander is the name of a river in what is now Turkey whose twists and turns the pattern recalls. 'Greek key' and 'Greek fret' are modern labels, and the motif also turns up in cultures far from Greece.

Sculpted male figures that hold up a building, as at the temple of Zeus in Agrigento, are named after which Titan?

Atlas was condemned to hold the sky on his shoulders for eternity, so the figures are called atlantes. The earliest to survive are the fallen ones at Agrigento.

Where did the altar of a Greek sanctuary usually stand in relation to the temple housing the god's statue?

Outside, in front of it, under the open sky, is where the altar stood, so a Greek temple worked as a house for the god's image rather than a hall for a congregation.

Which site in southern Italy, founded by Greek settlers as Poseidonia, preserves three remarkably intact Doric temples?

Paestum's ruins came to wide notice only in the eighteenth century, after the rediscovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum, when a new coastal road was being built south from Naples.

The Greek word stadion, which gave English the word stadium, was also the name of what?

A unit of length of 600 Greek feet, the stadion was also the distance of the sprint that, for about half a century, was the only event at Greece's most famous ancient games.

Which Roman author wrote De architectura, the only architectural treatise to survive from antiquity?

Vitruvius has been treated since the Renaissance as a major source on the classical orders. A Florentine humanist 'rediscovered' his book in the library of Saint Gall Abbey in 1414.

What Latin name is used for the inner chamber of a Greek temple, the room where the statue of the god stood?

Cella is Latin for 'small chamber'. The Greeks themselves called the room the naos, and it was typically a plain windowless room entered by a single doorway at the front.

What is the term for a continuous row of columns that surrounds a building or courtyard, as around the Parthenon?

Peristyle colonnades gave shelter from the sun and from sudden winter storms, and in Greek architecture a ring of columns right round the building was reserved for temples.

What are the 92 carved panels set between the triglyphs around the exterior of the Parthenon called?

Metopes on the Parthenon's south side show the Lapiths fighting the half-man, half-horse centaurs. In early buildings the spaces between the triglyphs were at first left open.

Which mountain north-east of Athens supplied the white marble used to build the Parthenon and much of the Acropolis?

Mount Pentelicus marble has a faint yellow tint that makes it shine with a golden hue in sunlight, and it was later exported to Rome for building and sculpture.

Which architect, credited by Pausanias with the Temple of Apollo at Bassae, designed the Parthenon with Callicrates?

Ictinus also co-wrote a book about the Parthenon project, now lost, and is named as architect of the great initiation hall at Eleusis.

Hippodamus of Miletus, who laid out the Athenian port of Piraeus, gave his name to which type of city street plan?

Rectangular grid plans of broad, straight streets crossing at right angles earned him the title 'father of European urban planning', though Greek cities had used such layouts before him.

On which small island off Alexandria did the Ptolemies build the great lighthouse that ranked among the Seven Wonders?

Pharos became the word for lighthouse itself in modern Greek, and was borrowed by French as phare and by Italian and Spanish as faro.

The Tower of the Winds in Athens had sundials on its walls and a wind vane on top; what did it house?

A water clock ran inside while sundials marked the hours on the outer faces, making this the only clock tower to survive from classical antiquity. Eight carved wind gods give it its name.

To which German city were the sculpted relief panels of the Pergamon Altar taken after excavations began in 1878?

Berlin put the panels on display in the Pergamon Museum after the German engineer Carl Humann led the official excavations. The great relief shows the gods battling the Giants.

The ancient Greek odeon, smaller than a theatre and roofed for better acoustics, was a building meant chiefly for what?

Music and song filled the odeon, whose name means 'singing place' and shares a root with the word ode. Poetry competitions were held there too.

What name is given to the great hall with a central hearth in a Mycenaean palace, a forerunner of the Greek temple?

Megaron halls held the throne of the wanax, the Mycenaean ruler, beside an open hearth whose smoke left through an opening in the roof.