A comprehensive look at the eagerly anticipated New Acropolis Museum in Athens, Greece, and the celebrated collection it houses. Marking the opening of the New Acropolis Museum, this book examines both its architecture and the archaeological treasures it was built to house. The building addresses the dramatic complexities of the collection and the site with minimalist simplicity by using three main materials—glass, stainless steel, and concrete. "There’s no way at the beginning of the twenty-first century you can try to imitate even superficially the art of 2,500 years ago," Tschumi says. The "precision of the concept was really what counted." The book provides an in-depth look at the creation of the building, set only 280 meters from the Parthenon, as well as the restoration, preservation, and housing of its exhibits through over 200 photographs, drawings, and texts.

One of the most important monuments of human civilisation and the new architectural jewel of Athens are both presented through informative, easy to read texts in a fully illustrated edition with colour representations and detailed site plans. This brand new book begins with a look at the history of Athens and the Acropolis. Starting at prehistoric times, this historical overview describes the town's development, from a quite modest Mycenaean settlement to one of the most powerful city-states of the classical era, the one that gave birth to democracy and theatre, and then its downfall to a small, provincial fortified town of the Byzantine Empire. At the same time, the reader can follow the historical steps of the Acropolis itself, originally a fort, which was transformed to the most glamorous shrine of the city, only to become a fort again, after the end of the ancient world. Then, there is a short account of the Athenian myths, especially the ones concerning the town's patron deity, Athena. After discovering the exciting past of the town and the sacred rock, the reader will get to know the temples, buildings in general, that were constructed at the top of the Acropolis during the archaic and classical era of Greece. Parthenon, the masterpiece of Pheidias, Iktinos and Kallikratis is, of course, the highlight, but there were other important and architecturally innovative structures there, such as the Propylaea and the Erechtheion. This part of the book gives a very good idea of how the ancient hill looked, with all its buildings and its uncountable offerings: statues that ancient Athenians were bringing to their goddess Athena as a present. Then, the reader will have the chance to learn everything about the very important south slope of the Acropolis, with the famous theatre of Dionysus, and enjoy an imaginary walk at the north and east slopes of the ancient rock. The second part of the book is devoted to the admittedly impressive new Acropolis Museum. The reader can "navigate" through the different levels of the museum exhibition, using the book as a guide which gives interesting information and highlights the most important exhibits. "Moschoforos," the Kore of the Acropolis, the Caryatids, Parthenon's frieze are only a few of the ancient pieces of art that this book presents, through captivating pictures and texts. In conclusion, The Acropolis, the New Acropolis Museum is a valuable reading for all those who want to explore and understand one of the major archaeological sites of the world and it's brand new Museum. Katerina Servi was born in Athens and studied archaeology at the National University of Athens. After graduating, she worked for the Greek Ministry of Culture and then in international advertising agencies in the creative department. She is now is a freelance copywriter and translator and also writes children's and archaeological books.

Built in the fifth century b.c., the Parthenon has been venerated for more than two millennia as the West’s ultimate paragon of beauty and proportion. Since the Enlightenment, it has also come to represent our political ideals, the lavish temple to the goddess Athena serving as the model for our most hallowed civic architecture. But how much do the values of those who built the Parthenon truly correspond with our own? And apart from the significance with which we have invested it, what exactly did this marvel of human hands mean to those who made it? In this revolutionary book, Joan Breton Connelly challenges our most basic assumptions about the Parthenon and the ancient Athenians. Beginning with the natural environment and its rich mythic associations, she re-creates the development of the Acropolis—the Sacred Rock at the heart of the city-state—from its prehistoric origins to its Periklean glory days as a constellation of temples among which the Parthenon stood supreme. In particular, she probes the Parthenon’s legendary frieze: the 525-foot-long relief sculpture that originally encircled the upper reaches before it was partially destroyed by Venetian cannon fire (in the seventeenth century) and most of what remained was shipped off to Britain (in the nineteenth century) among the Elgin marbles. The frieze’s vast enigmatic procession—a dazzling pageant of cavalrymen and elders, musicians and maidens—has for more than two hundred years been thought to represent a scene of annual civic celebration in the birthplace of democracy. But thanks to a once-lost play by Euripides (the discovery of which, in the wrappings of a Hellenistic Egyptian mummy, is only one of this book’s intriguing adventures), Connelly has uncovered a long-buried meaning, a story of human sacrifice set during the city’s mythic founding. In a society startlingly preoccupied with cult ritual, this story was at the core of what it meant to be Athenian. Connelly reveals a world that beggars our popular notions of Athens as a city of staid philosophers, rationalists, and rhetoricians, a world in which our modern secular conception of democracy would have been simply incomprehensible. The Parthenon’s full significance has been obscured until now owing in no small part, Connelly argues, to the frieze’s dismemberment. And so her investigation concludes with a call to reunite the pieces, in order that what is perhaps the greatest single work of art surviving from antiquity may be viewed more nearly as its makers intended. Marshalling a breathtaking range of textual and visual evidence, full of fresh insights woven into a thrilling narrative that brings the distant past to life, The Parthenon Enigma is sure to become a landmark in our understanding of the civilization from which we claim cultural descent.

The Parthenon sculptures in the British Museum are unrivaled examples of classical Greek art, an inspiration to artists and writers since their creation in the fifth century bce. A superb visual introduction to these wonders of antiquity, this book offers a photographic tour of the most famous of the surviving sculptures from ancient Greece, viewed within their cultural and art-historical context. Ian Jenkins offers an account of the history of the Parthenon and its architectural refinements. He introduces the sculptures as architecture--pediments, metopes, Ionic frieze--and provides an overview of their subject matter and possible meaning for the people of ancient Athens. Accompanying photographs focus on the pediment sculptures that filled the triangular gables at each end of the temple; the metopes that crowned the architrave surmounting the outer columns; and the frieze that ran around the four sides of the building, inside the colonnade. Comparative images, showing the sculptures in full and fine detail, bring out particular features of design and help to contrast Greek ideas with those of other cultures. The book further reflects on how, over 2,500 years, the cultural identity of the Parthenon sculptures has changed. In particular, Jenkins expands on the irony of our intimate knowledge and appreciation of the sculptures--a relationship far more intense than that experienced by their ancient, intended spectators--as they have been transformed from architectural ornaments into objects of art.

"The Acropolis through its Museum is not simply a guidebook to the works of art exhibited at the museum. These are the stimulus for synthesizing the history of the Sacred Rock as part of the cultural and the broader historical process of ancient Athens. The book follows the visitor's tour of the museum, so that he can read about the antiquities displayed before him. However, it is written in such a way that through independent inquiry the reader is able to approach the subjects more deeply and to understand the preconditions -- political, social, economic, ideological, artistic and technological -- that led to the creation of the unique monuments on the Acropolis."--Book flap.

The Elgin Marbles, designed and executed by Phidias to adorn the Parthenon, are some of the most beautiful sculptures of ancient Greece. In 1801 Lord Elgin, then British ambassador to the Turkish government in Athens, had pieces of the frieze sawn off and removed to Britain, where they remain, igniting a storm of controversy which has continued to the present day. In the first full-length work on this fiercely debated issue, Christopher Hitchens recounts the history of these precious sculptures and forcefully makes the case for their return to Greece. Drawing out the artistic, moral, legal and political perspectives of the argument, Hitchens's eloquent prose makes The Elgin Marbles an invaluable contribution to one of the most important cultural controversies of our times.