ATHENS (dpa) – It has been bombed, burglarized and ravaged by the weather. Now after centuries of neglect, a team of archaeologists, architects and engineers are close to restoring the ancient Acropolis in Athens to its former glory.One of the world’s most visited monuments, the sprawling temples on the Acropolis hill or “sacred rock” offer a unique glimpse of ancient Greek civilization. But a long and inglorious history of restoration has also meant the near-destruction of this unique architectural heirloom.
The Acropolis’ three main monuments, the Parthenon, the Propylaea and the temple of Athena Nike have suffered both from rusting iron clamps and cement inserts used in a misguided attempt to strengthen the temple earlier this century by Greek civil engineer Nikos Balanos.”While weather and pollution have had detrimental effects on the monuments, it is due to past restoration attempts that the Parthenon is near collapse. This is the biggest reason why we have started renovation work,” said Maria Ioannidou, director of the Acropolis Restoration Service.
In 1975, a team of Greek archaeologists, architects and engineers launched an ambitious 10.7 billion drachma (25 million dollars) restoration project, they hope will have been completed by the time Athens hosts the Olympic Games in August 2004.
“While our goal is to restore the monuments in time for the Olympics, this is not our main purpose in conducting our work. Our main purpose is to restore our monuments because they need salvaging,” said Ioannidou.Nearly 25 centuries after Pericles commissioned master sculpture Pheidias to build the Parthenon, experts are now in the process of dismantling the marble edifices to stop them crumbling away altogether.
Scaffolding is wrapped around much of the monument, with workers busily huddled over plans. The restoration work has focused on the Parthenon’s northern colonnade where eight columns will be stripped to their drums to allow restorers to remove rusted metal clamps and dowels.”The rusting iron clamps and cement supplements will be replaced with non-corrosive titanium rods and freshly cut marble blocks from the ancient quarries of Pendeli,” said Ioannidou.
“The iron clamps have done more to crack the ancient marble than perhaps anything else to date…Of course this is very difficult work because each architrave weighs anywhere between 7 to 8 tons,” she added.
Originally dedicated to Athena Parthenos, the patron goddess of Athens, the Parthenon has served as a pagan shrine, Christian church, citadel and mosque. Much of the northern colonnade was seriously damaged when the Venetians bombed it in an attack against the Turks in 1687.
The Parthenon’s run of bad luck continued when the British ambassador in Constantinople, Lord Elgin, removed a large part of the sculptural decoration of the monument and transferred them to England at the beginning of the 19th century. Dozens of friezes and metopes were sold to the British Museum, where they are still exhibited today.
Nearby, archaeologists have just finished dismantling the Temple of Athena Nike piece by piece. All eight columns, each standing 3.5 metres high and weighing about 3.5 tons had to be carefully removed using wooden beams and heavy padding to avoid damage.
As with the Parthenon, experts will be mainly focusing damage done to parts of the temple by metal bars inserted during past restoration attempts.Built by Kallikrates between 427 BC and 424 BC, the Temple of Athena Nike stands on an eight-metre-high platform overlooking the entrance to the Acropolis.
The current restoration project is the third such attempt on the temple. The Ottomans tore the temple down in 1686 and used it as an artillery position. The pieces were discovered during an excavation in 1835, and the temple was reconstructed over a period of seven years.In the late 1930s, Balamos had to dismantle and rebuild the temple owing to problems with the foundations.
According to Ioannidou, the current restoration project will reposition the parts in their original places because they were wrongly assigned in the past.Another challenging task for restorers is the Propylaea, the monumental gateway of the Acropolis. Designed by architect Mnesikles and constructed between 437 BC and 432 BC it comprises of a central building and two lateral wings.
Although the facade of the Propylaea gave it the appearance of a temple when seen from a distance, it actually functioned as a Stoa, a public gathering place with benches. Its covered roof was one of the most famous landmarks of ancient Athens.
While not as challenging a project as the Parthenon, Ioannidou insists restoration work on the Propylaea has reached a critical point.”After removing the rusted iron reinforcements from the marble columns and reassembling them using titanium rods we embarked on the next task which is taking apart and restoring the beams and coffers of the roof,” said Ioannidou.
“We hope that this time will be the last major restoration of all the temples and that our techniques will last forever.”
