Parthenon

The Parthenon is the temple of Athena on the Acropolis of Athens. An earlier temple begun after the Battle of Marathon was unfinished when the Persians sacked Athens in 480 BC. The present building was raised under Pericles between 447 and 438 BC; its cella housed Pheidias' colossal chryselephantine Athena Parthenos, and the rear chamber held the Delian League treasury.

In the final decade of the sixth century AD it became a church of the Virgin Mary, and under Latin rule a Catholic church. After the Ottoman conquest of Athens in 1458 it became a mosque with a minaret.

On 26 September 1687 a Venetian mortar shell ignited the Turkish gunpowder store and blew the centre apart. Lord Elgin removed about half the surviving sculptures between 1801 and 1812; after Greece took Athens in 1832 the minaret and later additions were cleared away.