Parthenon Facts & History

The Parthenon is the great marble temple crowning the Acropolis of Athens, and for nearly 2,500 years it has been the most influential building in Western architecture. It was raised as the temple of Athena Parthenos — “Athena the Maiden”, the virgin patron goddess of the city — and its name comes from her epithet. Here are the facts that matter, and the story behind them.

The Fast Facts

• What it is: a Doric temple to the goddess Athena, on the summit of the Acropolis in Athens.
• Built: construction began in 447 BC; the building was inaugurated in 438 BC; its sculpture was finished around 432 BC — roughly fifteen years.
• Architects: Iktinos and Kallikrates, under the overall artistic direction of the sculptor Pheidias.
• Commissioned by: the statesman Pericles, as the centrepiece of his programme to rebuild the temples the Persians had burned in 480 BC.
• Material: fine white Pentelic marble from Mount Pentelicus, north-east of Athens.
• Plan: a Doric peripteral temple with 8 columns across each end and 17 down each side (the famous “8 × 17”).
• Status: part of the Acropolis, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1987.

A Temple Built in Fifteen Years

The pace is one of the Parthenon’s quiet marvels. A structure of this scale and refinement, raised by hand in about fifteen years, was extraordinary even by the standards of classical Athens. The building was the showpiece of the Periclean building programme, funded in part by the treasury of the Delian League, and it announced Athens at the height of its power and confidence.

Inside the colonnade stood the cella, the inner chamber, which once held Pheidias’s lost masterpiece: a colossal statue of Athena Parthenos some twelve metres tall, made of gold and ivory over a wooden core — a technique the Greeks called chryselephantine. The statue vanished in antiquity; we know it only from ancient descriptions and small copies.

The Stones Are Not Straight

The fact that astonishes visitors most is that the Parthenon contains almost no straight lines. What looks like rigid geometry is a web of deliberate, barely perceptible curves — the optical refinements that make the temple feel alive. The base platform arches gently upward toward its centre; the columns lean slightly inward (extended skyward, they would eventually meet); each column swells subtly at its midpoint, a convex profile called entasis; and the corner columns are made a little thicker and set closer to their neighbours. Together these corrections fool the eye into reading the building as more perfectly regular than a truly regular building would appear. You cannot catch it in a photograph — it takes someone standing beside you, sighting along the steps, to reveal it. That is one reason the temple rewards a visit with a guide.

A Carved Argument in Marble

The Parthenon was as much a sculpture gallery as a temple. Around the outside ran ninety-two metopes, square relief panels of mythical battles — gods against giants, Lapiths against centaurs. Unusually for a Doric building, a continuous Ionic frieze about 160 metres long wound around the top of the inner chamber, showing the Panathenaic procession in Athena’s honour. At each gable a triangular pediment held larger-than-life figures: the birth of Athena from the head of Zeus on the east front, and her contest with Poseidon for the city on the west. Much of this sculpture no longer survives in place — which is the Parthenon’s other great story, told in the Parthenon Marbles debate.

From Temple to Church to Mosque to Ruin

The temple’s long afterlife is a chain of conversions and one catastrophe. Around the 6th century AD it became a Christian church dedicated to the Virgin Mary. After the Ottoman conquest of Athens it was turned into a mosque, with a minaret beside the ancient columns. Then came the disaster: on 26 September 1687, during a Venetian siege led by Francesco Morosini, the Ottomans were storing gunpowder inside the Parthenon. A Venetian shell scored a direct hit, the magazine exploded, and the blast blew out the centre of the building, collapsing the roof and much of the colonnade. Almost every gap you see in the middle of the temple today dates from that single afternoon.

Why It Still Matters

The Parthenon survived two and a half millennia of worship, conquest, conversion, an explosion, and the removal of half its sculptures — and it still stands as the benchmark for proportion and classical beauty. Reading it in person, stone by stone, is what turns a famous silhouette into an actual building. For how to time that visit, see the best time to see the Parthenon.

See It With a Guide

A top-rated small-group Parthenon & Acropolis guided tour brings these facts to life on the rock itself — the optical curves, the lost statue of Athena, the procession on the frieze, the explosion of 1687 — with skip-the-line entry, a licensed local guide, and free cancellation up to 24 hours before. Check availability and book the day that suits you.