1. Neolithic findings that were discovered on the slopes of the Acropolis show a continuous habitation on the hill, since at least 2800 BC, as it was a natural fortress, while there were water sources on its slopes.
2. The theater of Dionysos located at the foot of the Acropolis is considered to be the first theater in the history of the world.
3. The construction of the Parthenon temple began in 447 BC, its inauguration took place in 438 BC, but it took another 6 years to complete its rich sculptural decoration. It is one of the few Greek temples made entirely of marble and the only Doric temple with reliefs on all the metopes.
4. To build the Parthenon temple, 100,000 tons of marble had to be mined from the quarries of Penteli. The cost of mining and the cost of transportation, about 16 kilometers from the center to the Acropolis, was enormous and corresponded to the construction of 400 fully equipped warships.
5. The columns of the Parthenon are not exactly vertical. They are placed with a slight slope so that if they are extended upwards, they meet at 1852 meters, thus forming an imaginary pyramid, the top of which is directly above the place where the head of the statue of Athena was placed. Also, there is no straight line anywhere in the Parthenon plan. Soft curves are everywhere.
6. The Parthenon temple is a genius construction, executed with unparalleled mathematical precision. It is made according to the 4:9 ratio, better known as the “golden ratio”. This means that if we multiply the height of the temple by 9 and divide the resulting product by 4, then we will have found the width of the temple.
7. Although much of the structure remains intact, the Parthenon has suffered significant damage over the centuries. On September 26, 1687, during Francis Morosini’s military campaign against Athens, a bombshell shook the gunpowder shed that the Turkish Ali Agas had installed inside the temple and destroyed the largest part of the temple towards its eastern side. And between 1801 and 1803, Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin sawed off and detached a large number of sculptures and marbles and transported them to England. In fact, the boat that carried them sank off the island of Kythira and they would have been lost forever if the boxes had not been retrieved from the bottom of the sea with the help of Kalymnian divers. The sculptures, known as the Elginian marbles, were eventually sold to the British government in 1832 and have been in the British Museum ever since.
8. The name Parthenon came from one of the many nicknames of the Goddess Athena (Athina Parthenos, meaning the Virgin Athina) and initially, in the 5th century, it was given to the center of the depth of the temple’s nave, where the golden and ivory statue of the goddess, the work of the great sculptor Pheidias, had been placed. The temple itself was known as the Great Temple and later in the 4th century the name Parthenon was given to the entire construction.
9. In the course of the centuries, the Parthenon and the other buildings of the Acropolis went through various transformations. In the Byzantine years, until the 6th century AD, the Parthenon had already been converted into a Christian temple. During the Turkish occupation, it was turned into a mosque, the Propylaia into the residence of the Turkish guard and the Erechtheion into a harem. After the Greek Revolution of 1821, when the monument passed into the hands of the Greeks, it was sometimes used as a prison. Many people, up to nowadays, have chosen the Acropolis Rock to end their lives, with the most typical example being the couple of the military doctor Michael Mimikos and the German Mary Weber, a pedagogue at the palace, back in 1893.
10. In 1975, a methodical and coordinated effort to restore and maintain the Parthenon and other buildings of the Acropolis began, and still continues to this day.
