A Brief History of the Parthenon

After the Battle of Maration (490 to 88 B.C.), construction began on a massive monument to be dedicated to Athena Parthenos. In 480 B.C., while the building was still under construction, Persian forces stormed the city and leveled it. This first attempt to build the Parthenon resulted in what is now called the Pre-Parthenon or the Older Parthenon.

Upon returning victorious from war with the Persians, the Athenians found their city destroyed and responded a few decades later with a flourish of construction on the then-desolate Acropolis. The Parthenon took a remarkable 15 years to build, starting in 447 B.C. and reaching completion in about 432 B.C., although further decorations were added until 425 B.C. Under the glorious thirty year reign of Pericles and the artistic supervision of Pheidias, sculptor, as well as Iktinos and Kallikrates, architects, the Parthenon became the centerpiece of the city's newly erected skyline. It would serve as a temple to Athena as well as the treasury of the Delian League, of which Athens became the center.

The Parthenon survived intact until the fifth century, when Athens had long since been reduced to a provincial city under the control of Rome. Shortly after the statue of Athena was looted and carried away to Constantinople in the same century, the Parthenon began to be used as a Christian church, known in Byzantine times as the Church of the Parthenos Maria. Christians considered it the fourth most holy pilgrimage site in the Eastern Roman Empire. It continued as an important Christian site until the Latin occupation in the 13th century A.D., when the Parthenon was converted to a Roman Catholic church, removing internal columns, sculptures and adding an apse on the east side.

When Athens was taken by the Ottoman Turks in 1456, the Parthenon, like the Hagia Sofia before it, was turned into a mosque. The Ottomans altered the interior design and added a minaret, the base and stairway of which remain today. The building remained largely intact until the 17th century.

Led by Francesco Morosini, VenetianÂ troops delivered the most brutal blow in the Parthenon's history on September 26, 1687 when a fired mortar blew up Turkish magazines housed within the building, collapsing the roof and demolishing much of the interior. In the ensuing years of Ottoman stagnation, visiting French and British archeologists further damaged and detracted from the ancient building, detaching many remaining sculptures to be shipped away to museums, including many to the Louvre and the British Museum, to which went the famous Parthenon Marbles.

Shortly after the Greeks attained independence in 1832, most of the minaret as well as other Ottoman traces on the Parthenon were removed and the entire Acropolis area was marked off as a special historical precinct. In 1975, the Greek government began to restore the building, later receiving funding from the European Union for reconstruction projects. Although the building will never appear as it did before 1687, marble from the original quarry has been used to fill in as many gaps as possible to support the structure's enormous mass for centuries to come.

Site on the Elgin Marbles: