In architecture, preserving memory means to keep the measure and the dimension, because architecture is measure and dimension. A ruin means recognizing another kind of measurement, which is the consumption due to the transition of time and events.But if in the future the consumption’s measure will tend to zero, and the memory will disappear, would it be an arrival point or a point of no return? A building or a buildings complex, with a defined identity and bearer of meaning such as the Athenian Acropolis, is not supposed to tend to zero. If for some reason we were to lose our origins and our culture, what would happen? Not knowing where we come from. What is the consequence of losing memory?
Parthenon | Southwest side
At the beginning, the Parthenon was built as a pagan temple dedicated to Athena Polias, the patron goddess of the city. It was destroyed by the Persians in 480 BC, and then it was replaced by a larger temple built by Pericles and consecrated to Athena Parthenos. Athens’ destiny did not last so long, and in the fourth century it became a provincial city of the Roman Empire. In Byzantine times the temple was transformed in a church dedicated to the Virgin Mary. In fact, this type of classical buildings provided good large churches, and it was easy and cheap enough to convert them, even if the orientation of the buildings had to be overturned.
Parthenon | Inside view
The Christian reuse guaranteed the original structures’ preservation. The other ancient temples, abandoned, collapsed, while it is a fact that the temples that we can see nowadays owe their survival to the early Christians (eg the Pantheon). The interior furnitures of the Parthenon-cathedral were modified according to the transition from the Latin liturgy to the Orthodox’s one. The structure proved to be very flexible. In 1456, after the Ottoman conquest, the Turks turned the Parthenon into a mosque, adding a minarét. At that time, the building had been a Christian church for the same amount of time that it was a pagan temple. When Athens was again attacked in late seventeenth century by the Venetian armies, the Parthenon, used as a Turkish powder warehouse, was hit by the bombs brought it down.
Parthenon | Restauration
From this point, the history of the Parthenon is the history of a ruin. The explosion in 1687 made the Parthenon unusable to any kind of use, after more than two thousand years in which it had been temple, church and mosque. The Turks went back to the Acropolis and rebuilt their garrison’s quarters, creating another small mosque in the middle of the Parthenon’s ruins: that building was still standing and used as a museum in 1839. After two centuries Lord Elgin moved the Parthenon’s marbles and ornaments in London. But the building we are talking about wasn’t our Parthenon, and Lord Elgin didn’t act in an archaeological site, as we might call it nowadays, but in an improvised military base. Few years later, the Acropolis again became a war zone for Greek Independence against the Turks. A myth of this conflict wants the Greeks sending the Turks bullets as a gift, to prevent them from destroying the columns, whose blocks contained lead. At the end, the Western powers intervened to impose the Greek’s victory and the Greek independence from the Ottoman rule. At this period belonged the unrealized project by Karl Friedrich Schinkel, whose proposal was to convert the Acropolis into a royal palace. The Parthenon was then officially inaugurated as an ancient monument. Over the next 50 years, the hill was released from all medieval and following remains. Greece gave back to the world the Acropolis clean and free from barbaric additions.
Parthenon | Bomb’s hole
Further restoration campaign began in 1920 by the engineer Nikolaos Balanos, with a ten-year program of monuments’s reconstruction. Balanos tried very little to arrange the blocks to their original position. It wasn’t an accurate reconstruction, but a sort of invention based on the material available in situ. Even more dangerous was the use of iron to connect the elements, because after some years the iron itself oxidized and threatened to break the blocks. UNESCO intervened in 1975 with a new restoration program. On the Acropolis, each block has been classified and measured, and the dismantling works and reconstruction of the Parthenon were the subject of several meetings and discussions.
To complete the work will be served almost twice the time taken for the Parthenon original construction of the fifth century BC.
Parthenon | Digging at the foundations of the Parthenon
When we visit the Parthenon, we follow the steps of all those who have visited it before us and we pay our tribute to a symbol that has been written in our cultural history. It has the additional feature of being subject of discussion: if it had not been dismembered, the Parthenon would never have become so famous.
Intervento all’interno del Convegno Urbycide Syria, tenutosi presso l’Università Iuav di Venezia, 7-8 aprile 2016
Postwar reconstruction | Urbicide Syria
