Architecture: A Very Short Introduction

The most famous of the Greek sanctuaries now is the Acropolis in Athens — a rocky plateau that rears up from the floor of a broad valley. In very ancient times it was a fortified citadel, but by classical times it had become a religious sanctuary. Again, there were a number of buildings here, the most famous of which is the Parthenon (Figure 7) which is famously a building of the highest artistic accomplishment, built with astonishing precision, out of blocks of solid marble, very finely and accurately shaped. This was the artistic high point of the Acropolis. The most sacred building, though, was the Erechtheion, a rather quirky asymmetrical building, which seems to have been pushed into its final shape because it had to take account of various immovable features on its site. The tomb of an ancient king of Athens was here, and so was a scar in the rock that had been made when the sea-god Poseidon’s trident, a thunderbolt, had struck the ground when he was fighting with the goddess Athena. The story goes that the ancient city enjoyed the favours of the sea, and of the olive tree, given by Athena, a warrior virgin. When it came to the point at which a decision had to be made as to whose city this was, the two fought for it, and of course Athena won, which is why the city is called after her. At the Erechtheion there was in a courtyard a descendant of the original olive tree that Athena had brought to the city. Also inside there was a folding stool that had been made by Daedalus — the inventor, who had built the labyrinth on Crete, which housed the Minotaur, half-man, half-bull (whose conception Daedalus had engineered). Daedalus was later imprisoned in the labyrinth with his son Icarus, and they escaped when Daedalus made them wings so they could fly away. The story about how Icarus flew too high and came to grief is surprisingly better known than the story of the successful flight that Daedalus himself made. For us this is all plainly mythological, and we do not think of these events as historical facts, but at the Erechtheion there was an ingenious folding stool that had clearly been made by someone. There were other relics of a similar status — very ancient, with mythical provenances — that made the building a remarkable repository of the city’s claims to sacred and cultural authority. The natural features of the place that marked it out as sacred were supplemented with portable relics that enhanced its status, and they were housed in a building of exceptional quality that helped to make the high status of the place even clearer.