You Can Now See the Parthenon With out Scaffolding for the First Time in 200 Years

If you happen to’ve made the jour­ney to Athens, you prob­a­bly took the time to vis­it its most pop­u­lar vacationer attrac­tion, the Acrop­o­lis. On that mon­u­ment-rich hill, you greater than like­ly paid spe­cial atten­tion to the Parthenon, the traditional tem­ple ded­i­cat­ed to town’s identify­sake, the god­dess Athena Parthenos. However no mat­ter how a lot time you spent amid the ruins of the Parthenon, if that vis­it hap­pens to have tak­en place previously 200 years, it’s possible you’ll now ques­tion whether or not you’ve tru­ly seen it in any respect. That’s as a result of solely current­ly has scaf­fold­ing been eliminated that has par­tial­ly obscured its west­ern façade for the previous 20 years, end result­ing within the pur­er visu­al state seen in the clips col­lect­ed above.

The press atten­tion drawn by this occasion immediate­ed Greece’s Min­is­ter of Cul­ture Lin­da Males­doni to declare this the primary time the Parthenon’s exte­ri­or has been com­plete­ly freed from scaf­fold­ing in about two cen­turies. Hav­ing been orig­i­nal­ly constructed within the fifth cen­tu­ry BC, and are available by most of that span a lot the more serious for put on, it requires inten­sive and near-con­stant primary­te­nance.

Its inun­da­tion by vis­i­tors positive­ly does­n’t assist: an esti­mat­ed 4.5 mil­lion peo­ple went to the Acrop­o­lis in 2024, the sort of fig­ure that makes you consider within the diag­noses of glob­al “over­tourism” thrown round as of late. The Greek gov­ern­males­t’s coun­ter­mea­sures embody a dai­ly vis­i­tor cap of 20,000, imple­ment­ed in 2023, and a require­ment to order a timed entry slot.

If you happen to’d prefer to see the whol­ly un-scaf­fold­ed Parthenon in per­son, you’d finest reserve your personal slot as quickly as pos­si­ble: extra con­ser­va­tion work is sched­uled to start in Novem­ber, albeit with tem­po­rary infra­struc­ture designed to be “lighter and aes­thet­i­cal­ly a lot clos­er to the log­ic of the mon­u­ment,” as Males­doni has defined. However in case you miss that win­dow, don’t wor­ry, since that oper­a­tion ought to solely final till ear­ly subsequent sum­mer, and upon its com­ple­tion, “the Parthenon might be com­plete­ly freed of this scaf­fold­ing too, and peo­ple will have the ability to see it tru­ly free.” Not that they’ll have the ability to see it for free: even now, a gen­er­al-admis­sion Acrop­o­lis reser­va­tion prices €30 (about $35 USD) dur­ing the sum­mer­time peak sea­son. Athena was the god­dess of wis­dom, struggle­fare, and hand­i­craft, not wealth, nevertheless it clear­ly lies with­in her pow­ers to com­mand an honest value.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How the Historic Greeks Constructed Their Magazine­nif­i­cent Tem­ples: The Artwork of Historic Engi­neer­ing

A 3D Mod­el Reveals What the Parthenon and Its Inte­ri­or Seemed Like 2,500 Years In the past

How the Parthenon Mar­bles Finish­ed Up In The British Muse­um

The Metropolis of Nashville Constructed a Full-Scale Repli­ca of the Parthenon in 1897, and It’s Nonetheless Stand­ing As we speak

Artist is Cre­at­ing a Parthenon Fabricated from 100,000 Banned Books: A Mon­u­ment to Democ­ra­cy & Intel­lec­tu­al Free­dom

Based mostly in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His initiatives embody the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the ebook The State­much less Metropolis: a Stroll by Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social internet­work for­mer­ly often known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.