SWEETNESS AND LIGHT

The greatest pleasure of the Acropolis is the Erechtheum, the small temple perched at its north edge, across from the Parthenon. This structure, the last built on the site, housed an ancient wood statue of Athena and shrines for other deities including Hephaistos, Poseidon and Erechthios (from whom the building took its name).

Its architecture reflects these multiple purposes. It looks like a collection of small structures built over time, each with its own ground plane, scale and orientation. It doesn’t possess an authoritative front, back or center, although its famous northwest porch, supported by six female caryatids, gives it an extraordinary imaginative charge. It is intimate in spirit, and invites a visitor to approach it from every angle, explore each of its corners, climb each of its steps, and stand inside each of its shadows.

The Erechtheum takes strength in contrast to the Parthenon. It is eccentric rather than unified, lyrical rather than bombastic, charming rather than overpowering. The Parthenon, although ravaged, remains iconic; its array of massive swelling columns gives it an unassailable sculptural presence. It is a true monument, a single figure that can taken in all at once. The Erechtheum, instead, is best understood by walking around and through it. Now it is high, now it is dark, now it is mute, and now it is richly expressive. This building is many different things, a fleeting architecture, continually unreeling.

August 17, 2018 by Nalina Moses

THE GREEK WAY

The Parthenon is the world’s most iconic building, so it’s sad to see its current condition. Its stonework has suffered from centuries of war, weather, pillaging, and neglect; it’s a relic. What one sees of the current restoration work doesn’t inspire much confidence.

The temple’s front facade is embedded in a web of fine steel scaffolding, as if undergoing acupuncture. At the inner sanctum, where the gilded statue of Athena once presided, there is a construction crane whose massive boom could topple the remaining structure with one false move. Workmen, without boots or hardhats, crawl over the podium like ants. Behind the building loose masonry pieces, unmarked and presumably uncatalogued, lie in open piles. The grounds are unpaved and uregulated; there are no walkways and signage, with only thin cords to hold back visitors from construction zones.

When visiting Olympia, an ancient site with similar conditions, a visitor asked our guide, a native Athenian, why the Greeks didn’t rebuild the Temple of Zeus there, where only one original column stands but scores of stone blocks lay scattered around it. Our guide swept her hand over the scene and explained, “You don’t understand the Greeks; we’re OK with all of this.”

But at other sites in the country there has been strong, sensible reconstruction and preservation work. At Delphi there are paved paths and steps, wayfinding signage, and explanatory texts. The buildings have been discretely fortified; no rubble remains. And the new Acropolis Museum, a state-of-the-art facility, just below the ancient site, was built while preserving the archaeological ruins below its foundations. Now the Parthenon’s marbles have a fine home, while the building itself seems especially vulnerable.

August 14, 2018 by Nalina Moses

A very fashionable friend of mine was vacationing in Greece last month, and crafted a special laurel-leaf headdress from gold foil to wear when he visited the Acropolis. He looked godly in it, so much so that the security guards at the Parthenon asked him to take it off to honor the sacred nature of the site. Another thing the authorities might want to do, if they’re so concerned, is to protect the building properly while it’s being restored.

My friend’s photos captured the timeless appeal of the Acropolis buildings, showing piles of bleached stone against a dazzling blue sky, on a cliff high above the city. They also showed how vulnerable the Parthenon, the site’s chief attraction, is. Right now there are two construction cranes inside it, a web of steel scaffolding running through it, and, all around it, in post-apocalyptic disarray, piles of rubble and cut stone, scraps of ornamental sculpture, and three melon-sized canon balls from what looks like a nineteenth-century military attack. All these things are lying around unmarked, untagged, and uncovered, giving the place the feeling of a sunny junkyard. I remember a devastating piece 60 Minutes aired six months before the Athens Summer Olympics in 2004, which showed sheep grazing in the field where the new stadium would be. A spokesman for the Greeks explained cheerfully that this was “the Greek way,” to work without too much anxiety and bring everything together at the end. I hope there’s a similar magic guiding this project.

Photo by Robert Quadrini

October 03, 2012 by Nalina Moses