Antiquity History

Deep Dive · Ancient Greece

Greek Architecture: Temples, Theaters, and the Parthenon

Greek architecture is the foundation of the Western architectural tradition. Almost every important public building in Europe and America from the Renaissance to the twentieth century was, in some way, a reworking of a Greek temple, theater, or civic building. The columns of the United States Capitol, the British Museum, and the Brandenburg Gate are Greek columns. The pediments of the New York Stock Exchange and the pedimented facades of banks and government buildings across the world are Greek. The Parthenon in Athens — built in the fifth century BCE — is still the most influential building in the world.

This cluster page surveys the major forms of Greek architecture, the three classical orders, and the great monuments of the Greek world. It links out to deep dives on the Acropolis of Athens, the Acropolis buildings, and the broader story of Ancient Athens.

Building in Stone

Early Greek temples were built of wood and sun-dried mud brick, with only the columns and the roof tiles in stone. The switch to stone in the seventh and sixth centuries BCE made the buildings more durable, more expensive, and more architecturally refined. The Greeks developed sophisticated techniques of stone-cutting, jointing, and assembly, and they worked out rules of proportion and optical correction that would later be the subject of the Roman architect Vitruvius’ ten books on architecture.

The most common building material was limestone, often covered in a fine stucco that allowed the surface to be painted. Marble, especially the white marble of Mount Pentelicus in Attica and the gray-blue marble of the island of Paros, was used for the most prestigious buildings, including the Parthenon.

The Three Orders

Greek architecture is famous for its three classical orders, distinguishable by the design of their columns. The orders are the basic visual vocabulary of Western architecture; most neoclassical buildings from the late eighteenth century onward use one of the three.

The Doric Order

The Doric order is the oldest and simplest. It is characterized by a fluted column without a base, a plain capital consisting of a rounded echinus and a square abacus, and an entablature of plain architrave, a frieze of alternating triglyphs and metopes, and a projecting cornice. The Parthenon is the most famous Doric building; the temple of Hephaestus in Athens and the temples at Paestum and Agrigento are other well-preserved examples.

The Ionic Order

The Ionic order developed in the Greek-speaking cities of Ionia, on the coast of modern Turkey, in the sixth century BCE. The Ionic column is more slender than the Doric, has a base (often elaborately molded), and is topped by a capital of paired spiral scrolls, called volutes. The Erechtheion on the Acropolis is the most famous Ionic building in Athens. The temple of Athena Nike on the Acropolis is also Ionic. The orders were later combined in the same building; the Parthenon, for example, is Doric on the outside but has an Ionic frieze running around the cella.

The Corinthian Order

The Corinthian order was developed in Athens in the fifth century BCE, though it became more popular in the Hellenistic and Roman periods. The Corinthian column is even more slender than the Ionic, and its capital is a stylized arrangement of acanthus leaves. The Temple of Olympian Zeus in Athens, begun in the sixth century BCE and completed by the Roman emperor Hadrian in the second century CE, has Corinthian columns.

The Greek Temple

The Greek temple was not a place of worship in our modern sense. The cult statue of the god stood in the cella, the inner room, and the temple served as the house of the god rather than a gathering place for worshippers. Religious rituals were performed outside, on altars in front of the temple.

Greek temples were rectangular buildings, usually raised on a stepped platform called the crepidoma, and surrounded by columns on all four sides (peripteral). The basic parts were:

The Parthenon

The Parthenon, on the Acropolis of Athens, is the most famous Greek building and one of the most famous buildings in the world. It was built between 447 and 432 BCE, as the centerpiece of the building program of the Athenian statesman Pericles, designed by the architects Ictinus and Callicrates, with the sculptor Phidias as the overall artistic director.

The Parthenon was a temple to Athena Parthenos (“Athena the Virgin”), the patron goddess of Athens. The cult statue, by Phidias, was a colossal chryselephantine (gold and ivory) figure of the goddess, more than twelve meters tall, that was lost in antiquity. The temple is Doric on the outside, with eight columns across the front and back and seventeen along the sides. The outer colonnade surrounds a cella divided into two rooms: the larger eastern room, which housed the cult statue, and the smaller western room, which served as the treasury of the Delian League.

The Parthenon is famous for its optical refinements — the slight curvature of the stylobate, the inward lean of the columns, the corner columns slightly thicker than the others, the columns slightly bulged in the middle. These refinements, the Greeks believed, made the building look more perfect to the eye. Modern study has confirmed that the Greeks were right.

The Parthenon’s sculptural decoration was extraordinary: a continuous Ionic frieze (the only Ionic frieze on an otherwise Doric building) running around the cella wall; ninety-two metopes carved in high relief with scenes from mythology; two pediments with mythological sculptures, of which much of the central sculpture is lost.

The Parthenon has served as a Christian church (in Byzantine and medieval times), as a Catholic cathedral, and as an Ottoman mosque. In 1687, a Venetian bombardment ignited Ottoman gunpowder stored inside the temple, blowing out the middle of the building. The surviving structure was further damaged in the early nineteenth century, when the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Lord Elgin, removed much of the surviving sculptural decoration — the so-called Elgin Marbles — and sold them to the British Museum, where they remain the subject of an ongoing repatriation dispute.

Greek Theaters

Greek drama was performed in outdoor theaters built into hillsides. The earliest theaters were little more than circular dancing floors (orchestra) with rows of wooden seats. By the fifth century BCE, the form had crystallized into the theatron (seating area, in concentric tiers carved out of the hillside), the orchestra (the circular performance space at the bottom), and the skene (the stage building behind the orchestra, from which the actors emerged). The Theater of Dionysus at the foot of the Acropolis is the birthplace of Western drama. The theaters at Epidaurus, Delphi, and Pergamon are the best preserved.

Greek Civic Architecture

In addition to temples and theaters, the Greeks built a wide range of civic buildings: the stoa (a long, covered walkway used for business and conversation), the bouleuterion (the council chamber), the prytaneion (the town hall), the gymnasium (for physical training), the palaestra (for wrestling), the xystus (a covered running track), and the public agora (marketplace). The Athenian Agora, the marketplace of the world’s first democracy, is one of the most thoroughly excavated civic sites in the world.

The Hellenistic Inheritance

After Alexander the Great, the architectural forms of the Greeks were carried all the way to India and Egypt. Hellenistic architects experimented with urban planning on a new scale, designing entire cities on regular grid plans (such as the Hellenistic city of Priene in Asia Minor). The Corinthian order became more common. Theaters, stadiums, and gymnasia were built across the eastern Mediterranean. The Romans then took over the Greek vocabulary and added their own innovations — the arch, the vault, and the dome — to produce the imperial Roman architecture that would eventually become the foundation of Christian church architecture.