Image Details

Courtesy of the Andrew Dickson White Architectural Photograph Collection, ca. 1865-1950. The Division of Rare And Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library

Not far from the Erechtheum is the Parthenon, a 228-foot-long Doric temple designed by the architects Callicrates and Ictinus. The building was erected between 447 and 432 B.C. under the supervision of the artist Phidias (who carved the Parthenon’s sculptures, including the colossal ivory-and-gold statue of Athena that once stood inside the temple). Stillman’s southeastern view of the Parthenon captures the elegant simplicity of the building’s soaring marble columns, as well as the damage wrought by a massive explosion in 1687, when Venetian canon fire ignited Turkish gunpowder stored within the building (Greece was then under Ottoman occupation).