Parthenon_01 Poster

A view of Parthenon on the Acropolis. The temple of Athena, the Virgin ("parthenos" in Greek) Goddess, protector of Athens, at the top of the Acropolis. Its construction, on the site of two earlier temples to Athena Parthenos, the second of which was yet unfinished when it was destroyed by the Persians in 480 B. C., was ordered by Pericles and took 10 years, from 447 to 438 B. C., date of its inauguration during the Panathenæa of that year, but the decoration was not completed until 432. The architects who built it were Ictinus and Callicrates, working under the leadership of Phidias, a friend and art councelor of Pericles, who sculpted the chryselephantine (meaning "plated with gold ("chrusos" in Greek) and ivory ("elephas, elephantos" in Greek)") statue of Athena that was inside the temple (Thucydides tells us in his Histories, II, 13, 5, that forty talents of pure gold had been used for the plating of the statue, and could be removed in case of financial need).