The West Pediment of the Parthenon
(From a drawing by Jacques Carrey in 1674)
Athens, Greece
5th century B.C.
SCULPTURES DESTROYED ON SEPTEMBER 28, 1687 DURING AN AMMUNITION EXPLOSION

“Earth proudly wears the Parthenon as the best gem upon her zone” - Ralph Waldo Emerson (Poet, Essayist)

Such is the fame of one of the most well known architectural buildings of all time. Built on the Acropolis Hill or ‘the sacred rock’ in the 5th century B.C.E., the Parthenon is a major link to the classical aesthetics and forms the basis of the art of modern western world. Constructed in the 5th century replacing an early structure that was ransacked by the Persian invaders, the temple was the most significant monument ever dedicated to Athena Parthenos, the patron goddess of Athens.

The most magnificent offering to the goddess to date, the Parthenon was virtually a museum in itself with various Greek myths and stories depicted in beautifully carved high relief and sculptures. The sculptor Pheidias exercised as a supervisor to the sculptural decorations of the Doric style temple. In fact the creation of the forty feet high statue of Athena made of ivory and gold that was erected inside the main complex is attributed to Pheidias himself.

Though the Parthenon remains as one of the most preserved Greek temples, it is only a shadow of the splendor lost in time.

Through the centuries, the ancient temple has been immensely neglected, remodeled, looted and forcefully restored. The 3rd century fire destroyed much of the temple and was minimally restored. In the 6th century A.C.E., the temple of Athena was converted in a Christian church and went through a series of architectural modifications. Unlike the ancient Greek beliefs where the devotee never enters the temple, the new Christian Parthenon was now meant to receive the congregation. To illuminate the interiors of the new church, new windows were carelessly carved into the walls; the east pediment was dismantled and most of north, west and east metopes were reworked to adopt the Christian iconography.

Falling under Ottoman rule, the Parthenon was converted into a mosque in the early 1460s. While being used as a storehouse for gunpowder, on September 26, 1687 the Parthenon suffered major destruction when a bomb from Venetian fleet ignited the gunpowder, destroying most of the interior structure and demolishing the remaining roof. The sculptures however suffered the most. Only some records, lacking in detail and character, of the sculptures destroyed during this explosion still exist in the form of drawings done by a French artist Jacques Carrey in 1674 and are now exhibited in Bibliothéque Nationale, Paris. 

By the late 18th century, the Parthenon became a prey to the hands of aestheticians and collectors of Europeans who visited the ruins of Acropolis. In the same spirit of Romans who carried away art treasures, the European collectors like Lord Elgin, the British Ambassador at Constantinople and Choiseul-Gouffier, a French diplomat, made their full efforts to carry the fragments of the artistic wonder back to their native countries. As a result, over half the existing sculptures now are in the collection of the British Museum in London, and some fragments exist in numerous other museums like the Louvre in Paris, National Museum in Copenhagen, the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, and the Vatican Museum in Rome.