Its flat top is due to the numerous landfills that have accommodated construction of fortifications and temples since the Mycenaean era. With its many shallow caves, the abundant percolating water springs and steep slopes, the Acropolis was a prime location for habitation and worship location for Neolithic man. While the area around Attica was inhabited during the Upper Paleolithic period — BCE , archaeological evidence suggests that the small caves around the Acropolis rock and the Klepsythra spring were in use during the Neolithic Period BCE.
The chronicle of the Acropolis of Athens is lost in prehistory, to a time even before the plane of Attica began to be cultivated. In Mycenaean times small towns developed around a fortified citadel where the king resided and controlled the surrounding area. While virtually every city had an Acropolis, like Mycenae and Tyrins, the Athenian citadel became synonymous with the word in the minds of most people during the last two millennia.
The Mycenaean civilization established many important centers, one of which was Athens. The first inhabitants we can trace to the Acropolis of Athens were Mycenaean Kings who fortified the rock with massive eight-meter tall walls, and built their palaces there in the 14th century BCE.
Housing a gold and ivory statue of the goddess Athena, whom the temple was dedicated to, the structure was lavishly decorated in color. It had 17 columns on its long sides and eight columns on its short ends. There were two pediments triangular niches holding statues towering above the short sides of the temple.
The sculptures on the east pediment telling the tale of the birth of Athena and those on the west show a battle between Athena and Poseidon to determine who would be the patron god of Athens. In addition, the Parthenon had 92 metopes carved in high relief showing scenes from Greek mythology. They were perched high atop the building, surrounding it on all four sides. In the south, the metopes show a fight between Lapiths a legendary people and centaurs, while to the west they depict Amazons women warriors fighting Greek soldiers.
In addition, a frieze, carved in low relief, wraps around the Parthenon for feet meters. The Erechtheion was an asymmetrical complex, started in B. Although not technically part of the Acropolis, a number of structures were built on the southern slope of the Acropolis.
Among them was a theater of Dionysus, shaped like an orchestra, which dates back to as early as the sixth century B. Later Pericles, the statesman, constructed a roofed Odeon beside it now largely destroyed where, according to the ancient writer Plutarch, Pericles held musical contests.
He himself was elected manager, and prescribed how the contestants must blow the flute, or sing, or pluck the zither [a string instrument]. The passage of time was not kind to the Acropolis.
With the spread of Christianity in Greece, the Parthenon would eventually be turned into a church and many of its metopes would be defaced. But perhaps the worst event in the history of the Acropolis occurred in during a siege of Athens by a Venetian force. At the time, the city was controlled by the Ottoman Empire, whose military forces used the Parthenon as a gunpowder store. The structure was hit during the battle and an explosion devastated the Parthenon, leaving it in ruins.
Even now, with no function apart from tourism, it is the undeniable heart of the city, around which everything else clusters, glimpsed at almost every turn. As well as the iconic Parthenon, the summit of the Acropolis is home to the Erechtheion, the Temple of Athena Nike and the Propylaia, as well as lesser remains of many other ancient structures.
Today, as throughout history, the Propylaia are the gateway to the Acropolis. In Classical times the Sacred Way extended along a steep ramp to this massive monumental double gatehouse; the modern path makes a more gradual, zigzagging ascent, passing first through an arched Roman entrance, the Beule Gate, added in the third century AD. The Propylaia were constructed by Mnesikles from — BC, and their axis and proportions aligned to balance the recently completed Parthenon.
In order to offset the difficulties of a sloping site, Mnesikles combined, for the first time, standard Doric columns with the taller and more delicate Ionic order. The ancient Athenians, awed by the fact that such wealth and craftsmanship should be used for a purely secular building, ranked this as their most prestigious monument. The procession — depicted on the Parthenon frieze — wound right through the Classical city from the gates now in the Kerameikos site via the Propylaia to the Parthenon and, finally, the Erechtheion.
You can see traces of the ancient route just inside the Propylaia, where there are grooves cut for footholds in the rock and, to either side, niches for innumerable statues and offerings. In Classical times it ran past a 10m-high bronze statue of Athena Promachos Athena the Champion , whose base can just about be made out.
Close to the Propylaia too are the scant remains of a Sanctuary of Artemis. Although its function remains obscure, it is known that the precinct once housed a colossal bronze representation of the Wooden Horse of Troy. More noticeable is a nearby stretch of Mycenaean wall running parallel to the Propylaia that was incorporated into the Classical design.
It has only recently reappeared, having been dismantled, cleaned and reconstructed. Not for the first time either: demolished by the Turks in the seventeenth century, the temple was reconstructed from its original blocks two hundred years later.
In myth, it was from the platform beside the temple that King Aegeus maintained a vigil for the safe return of his son Theseus from his mission to slay the Minotaur on Crete. Seeing the black sails, Aegeus assumed his son had perished and, racked with grief, threw himself to his death.
Yet even in their wildest dreams its creators could hardly have imagined that the ruins would come to symbolize the emergence of Western civilization — nor that, two-and-a-half millennia on, it would attract some two million tourists a year.
Originally the columns were brightly painted and surrounded by the finest sculpture of the Classical age, foremost among them the beautiful Parthenon frieze and pediments. Also brightly coloured, these are generally held to have depicted the Panathenaic procession, the birth of Athena and the struggles of Greeks to overcome giants, Amazons and centaurs.
The greater part of the frieze, along with the central columns, were destroyed by the Venetian bombardment in The best surviving examples are in the British Museum in London; the Acropolis Museum also has a few original pieces, as well as reconstructions of the whole thing. The columns their profile bowed slightly to avoid seeming concave are slanted inwards by 6cm, while each of the steps along the sides of the temple was made to incline just 12cm over a length of 70m. To the north of the Parthenon stands the Erechtheion, the last of the great works of Pericles to be completed.
Athena won, and became patron of the city. Today, the sacred objects within are long gone, but the elegant Ionic porticoes survive. By far the most striking feature, however, is the Porch of the Caryatids, whose columns form the tunics of six tall maidens. The Theatre of Dionysos is one of the most evocative locations in the city. Here the masterpieces of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes were first performed; it was also the venue in Classical times for the annual festival of tragic drama, where each Greek citizen would take his turn as member of the chorus.
Twenty of the original 64 tiers of seats survive. Most notable are the great marble thrones in the front row, each inscribed with the name of an official of the festival or of an important priest; in the middle sat the priest of Dionysos and on his right the representative of the Delphic Oracle.
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