How many pillars are on the side of the parthenon

A generation before, the Athenians, as part of an alliance of Greek city-states, had led heroic victories against Persian invaders. This alliance would evolve into a de facto empire under Athenian rule, and some to cities across the Aegean began paying Athens huge sums of what amounted to protection money. Basking in glory, the Athenians planned their new temple complex on a lavish, unprecedented scale—with the Parthenon as the centerpiece.

But unforeseen problems arose as soon as workers started disassembling the temples. For example, the ancient Greek builders had secured the marble blocks together with iron clamps fitted in carefully carved grooves. They then poured molten lead over the joints to cushion them from seismic shocks and protect the clamps from corrosion. But when a Greek architect, Nikolas Balanos, launched an enthusiastic campaign of restorations in , he installed crude iron clamps, indiscriminately fastening one block to another and neglecting to add the lead coating.

Rain soon began to play havoc with the new clamps, swelling the iron and cracking the marble. Less than a century later, it wasclear that parts of the Parthenon were in imminent danger of collapse.

In a set of vivid drawings, he depicted how the ancient builders extracted some , tons of marble from a quarry 11 miles northeast of central Athens, roughly shaped the blocks, then transported them on wagons and finally hauled them up the steep slopes of the Acropolis. To speed up the job, engineers built a flute-carving machine. The device, however, is not precise enough for the final detailing, which must be done by hand. This smoothing of the flutes calls for an expert eye and a sensitive touch.

To get the elliptical profile of the flute just right, a mason looks at the shadow cast inside the groove, thenchips and rubs the stone until the outline of the shadow is a perfectly even and regular curve. The ancients spent a lot of time on another finishing touch.

With hundreds of thousands of chisel blows, they executed this pattern in precisely ordered rows covering the base, floors, columns and most other surfaces.

The dates come from the inscribed financial accounts. One key factor may have been naval technology. Since the Athenians were the greatest naval power in the Aegean, they likely had unrivaled mastery of ropes, pulleys and wooden cranes. Such equipment would have facilitated the hauling and lifting of the marble blocks.

Another, counterintuitive possibility is that ancient hand tools were superior to their modern counterparts. After analyzing marks left on the marble surfaces, Korres is convinced that centuries of metallurgical experimentation enabled the ancient Athenians to create chisels and axes that were sharper and more durable than those available today.

The idea is not unprecedented. Modern metallurgists have only recently figuredout the secrets of the traditional samurai sword, which Japanese swordsmiths endowed with unrivaled sharpness and strength by regulating the amount of carbon in the steel and the temperature during forging and cooling.

Moreover, the restoration team has confronted problems that their ancient Greek counterparts could never have contemplated. During the Great Turkish War in the late 17th century—when the Ottoman Empire was battling several European countries—Greece was an occupied nation. The Turks turned the Parthenon into an ammunition dump. More than blocks from those walls—eroded over time—now lay strewn around the Acropolis.

For five years, beginning in , Cathy Paraschi, a Greek-American architect on the restoration project, struggled to fit the pieces together, hunting for clues such as the shape and depth of the cuttings in the blocks that once held the ancient clamps. The different types of orders column plus entablature are illustrated by these diagrams, from Perseus: Doric order , and Ionic order.

The Doric order is characterized by the series of triglyphs and metopes on the entablature. Each metope was occupied by a panel of relief sculpture. The Parthenon combines elements of the Doric and Ionic orders.

Basically a Doric peripteral temple, it features a continuous sculpted frieze borrowed from the Ionic order, as well as four Ionic columns supporting the roof of the opisthodomos. The metopes of the Parthenon all represented various instances of the struggle between the forces of order and justice, on the one hand, and criminal chaos on the other.

On the west side, the mythical battle against the Amazons Amazonomachy ; on the south, the battle between the Lapiths and the Centaurs Centauromachy ; on the east, the battle between the gods and the giants Gigantomachy ; on the north, the Greeks versus the Trojans.

Of the panels the best preserved are those showing the Centauromachy. For a complete catalogue, with images and descriptions of all the Parthenon metopes, see Perseus' Parthenon Metope Page photos will be available only if you are on a Reed computer or a computer on another campus which has enhanced access to the Perseus photos by license agreement , and theAustralian National University collection photos, but no text.

These relief sculptures, larger than those of the metopes, occupied the triangular space above the triglyphs and metopes. Those at the west end of the temple depicted the contest between Poseidon and Athena for the right to be the patron deity of Athens Athena's gift of the olive tree was preferred over Poseidon's spring.

The eastern pedimental group showed the birth of Athena from Zeus' head. The pedimental sculpture suffered badly when the Parthenon was hit by a Venetian shell in and the powder magazine inside exploded. This reclining god probably Dionysus from the east pediment gives some sense of the quality of the sculpture:. For a complete catalogue, with images and descriptions of all the Parthenon pedimental sculpture, see Perseus' Parthenon East Pediment Page and West Pediment Page photos will be available only if you are on a Reed computer or a computer on another campus which has enhanced access to the Perseus photos by license agreement.

The Parthenon frieze runs around the upper edge of the temple wall. On the exterior, the Doric columns measure 1. The corner columns are slightly larger in diameter. The Parthenon had 46 outer columns and 23 inner columns in total, each column containing 20 flutes.

Subsequently, question is, does the Parthenon have Corinthian columns? At the Parthenon , the columns are 34' 3" high. Like all Doric columns , those at the Parthenon taper slightly towards the top. The three main types of columns used in Greek temples and other public buildings are Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian. A line of six Doric columns supported the front and back porch, while a colonnade of 23 smaller Doric columns surrounded the statue in a two-storied arrangement.

The Parthenon combines elements of the Doric and Ionic orders. Basically a Doric peripteral temple , it features a continuous sculpted frieze borrowed from the Ionic order, as well as four Ionic columns supporting the roof of the opisthodomos. What's the difference between Acropolis and the Parthenon? The Acropolis is the high hill in Athens that the Parthenon , an old temple, sits on. Acropolis is the hill and the Parthenon is the ancient structure. In fact, there are virtually no straight lines or right angels in the Parthenon.

The columns themselves are not straight along their vertical axes, but swell in their middles. The cost of entrance to the Acropolis is about 20 euros and is good for the other sites in the area including the ancient agora, theatre of Dionysos, Kerameikos, Roman Agora, Tower of the Winds and the Temple of Olympian Zeus and is supposedly good for a week.

You can also buy individual tickets to these other sites. Another reason the Parthenon is special is the wonderful sculptures it was covered with. There were 92 metopes which were all carved, as well as the pediments and the frieze on the outside of the cella. The gigantic statue was over 12 m high and made of carved ivory and gold — 1, kilos of gold, to be exact. The Greek Central Archaeological Council KAS decided on Wednesday that a part of the Parthenon , now in ruins on the Athens Acropolis, is to be rebuilt using mostly materials which are now lying on the ground.

Inside the building stood a colossal image of Athena Parthenos, constructed of gold and ivory by Pheidias and probably dedicated in BC.