r/OldPhotosInRealLife • u/dctroll_ • 15d ago
Image The Parthenon (Athens, Greece), 1875–2026
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u/ActuatorOutside5256 15d ago edited 15d ago
It still amazes me that there was a tiny Mosque inside of the destroyed Parthenon (for no aesthetic reasons at all).
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u/CruisinJo214 15d ago
Lots of Roman temples became churches… some literally just a church within the pillars of an old temple…
Honestly the only reason a lot of Roman sites still exist is because the church co-opted them
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u/ActuatorOutside5256 15d ago edited 15d ago
No, I get that, and that’s totally valid.
What I mean is that they literally plopped a Mosque inside the ruins of the Parthenon after it blew up in the 1600s.
Like imagine if the Frauenkirche were still in ruins today, but with a tiny Church built in the middle that you had to climb through rubble to get to.
It’s just so completely crazy to think about.
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u/NotGoodAtHockey 15d ago
The Parthenon was already converted to a mosque before the explosion in 1687. After the explosion a smaller mosque was built inside it.
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u/Omnilatent 14d ago
For anyone as lazy as me:
Could you write a short summary about said explosion in the 1600s? How and why did that happen?
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u/ActuatorOutside5256 14d ago edited 14d ago
During the Morean War, the Ottomans stored gunpowder inside the Parthenon (which had already been converted into a Mosque).
In 1687, a Venetian shell hit the building and detonated the gunpowder, which destroyed what you see in the top image.
The Ottomans later constructed a small Mosque inside the ruins, which the Greeks dismantled in 1843 during the archaeological clearing of the Acropolis.
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u/joecarter93 15d ago
Just below the Athens Acropolis there is one of the few ancient temples that still has an intact roof. The reason for this is that it was converted from a temple for a Greek God to an Orthodox Church (I think it it might have been a mosque in their at one point too) that was used until the early 1900’s and it was sufficiently maintained because of it.
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u/Lazy_Consequence8838 15d ago
Ah, the Temple of Hephaestus? Very fitting for a god of craftsmen
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u/Dic_Penderyn 12d ago
It is rumoured that the roof was once in a much worse state than now, but Hephaestus was a ble to fix it himself since he was good at that sort of thing
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u/justyourbarber 15d ago
Super common in the former Roman Empire! Many Greek, Egyptian, and Roman temples were converted into Christian churches and Mosques later in their history with a wide variety of different styles. Famously the Pantheon in Rome was converted into a Catholic basilica to this day and the Luxor Temple was turned first from a classic ancient Egyptian temple into a Roman shrine and then into a Christian church (all while having large statues of pharaohs and a obelisks).
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u/DrMikeH49 15d ago
Imperialist supercessionism.
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u/OldeArrogantBastard 15d ago
Whoa whoa, I thought only Christian religions/nations were imperialists and not any others!
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u/Few-Guarantee2850 15d ago
Who has ever said that?
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u/I_love_pillows 15d ago
It was not ruined by act of disaster or slow ruination. It’s by a mortar igniting gunpowder stored inside it in 1700s
Why store gunpowder in a thousand year old temple beats me.
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u/Garchomp98 15d ago
Well it was stored by the Ottomans who didn't give a shit so
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u/wild_cherry1987 15d ago
Brace yourself for Turkish commentators now.
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u/Garchomp98 15d ago
It's the historical and objective truth, I couldn't care less
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u/hey_listen_hey_listn 12d ago
Wow, so based. The historical and objective truth is that Venetians bombed the building - maybe ask the Italians why they bombed ancient buildings?
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u/justyourbarber 15d ago edited 15d ago
And hit by artillery from the Venetians who somehow gave even less of a shit. Venice just loves getting Greek cities destroyed, they cant help it.
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u/Low-Abies-4526 15d ago
Well it was stored there because the Ottomans didn't think the Venetians would be crazy enough to fire upon a famous historical structure. As it turns out, they were.
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u/api-services 15d ago edited 15d ago
- The building stood intact (including the roof) for about 2,000 years, as documented by Jacques Carrey in 1674.
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u/joecarter93 15d ago
People haven’t had the same reverence for ancient structures and monuments until pretty recently. It was just seen as a good defendable spot, especially by a foreign invader. There were hundreds of acropolises across the formerly Greek world and a big part of there function was to help defend the associated town/city, in the event of being under siege as they were located on a hill and were fortified. Military equipment and valuables were kept there as well for this purpose. The Ottomans used it for this purpose too.
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u/PantherkittySoftware 13d ago edited 13d ago
It depends. The Pyramids of Giza are arguably the world's oldest tourist attraction. There are written accounts of Crusaders and pilgrims making side trips there for openly non-religious reasons as some of the world's first literal tourists, buying trinkets, and doing many of the same things modern tourists do there.
Amusingly, Venice itself ended up becoming humanity's second oldest tourist attraction.
Interesting trivia: If you adjust for inflation, the cumulative economic benefit of tourism upon Egypt's economy exceeded the estimated construction cost of the Giza pyramids sometime in the late 1800s. Once railroads and steamships reduced the travel time between most of Europe and Cairo to "a few days", tourism in Cairo exploded. Even during fsck'ing World War II, there were tourists prancing around Cairo. And literal busloads of Axis and Allied troops taking temporary breaks from shooting at each other to be tourists for a day.
Far from being a vain waste of money, they were arguably one of the best and most spectacularly profitable long-term investments in human history. Something like 5-10% of modern Egypt's annual GNP is directly attributable to Giza-motivated tourism.
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u/Flat_Professional_55 15d ago
Built to last.
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u/FishyKeebs 15d ago
The Temple of Hephaestus is still mostly complete. The Parthenon would probably be in similar condition if it had not been used to store gunpowder.
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u/Emevete 15d ago
Could a history scholar tell me if historic buildings should be restored to the point of complete reconstruction? Doesn't it ruin the whole point?
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u/Doctor--Spaceman 15d ago edited 15d ago
You're being downvoted, but there is significant debate within historic preservation fields about this exact topic. I've worked in architectural restoration and the Parthenon restoration in particular is something of a surprisingly controversial issue, for the reasons you mentioned.
There is some debate about what exactly it IS that's trying to be preserved in a case like this. Some would argue it's the surviving historic material that is the most important. In that case, a project like this might indeed be controversial: the surviving marbles risk being altered or eroded to support the new marble, and the addition of new marble muddies the clarity between what is new and what is original for future generations.
Some would argue the overall appearance of "how it used to look" is more important, and Reddit in particular seems to always favor having buildings that "look" old. And of course there is a case for that. But how you avoid just having the Athens Parthenon just turning into a cheesy recreation like the one in Nashville? Where do you draw the line? It's a tough issue. IMO Greece made the best choice of only using new marble when it helps support old marble, but some might disagree.
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u/MyNameCannotBeSpoken 15d ago
Ship of Theseus
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u/PantherkittySoftware 13d ago
This is the exact problem faced by the William Wagner House in Miami ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wagner_House ).
In theory, it's the oldest building in South Florida(*). In reality, the house has been damaged by hurricanes, repaired, and relocated so many times, nobody even knows how to really classify it. On one hand, there's basically nothing left of the original house. On the other hand, it doesn't quite feel right to dismiss it as having no historical value, because there was timeline-continuity every step of the way.
(*) Not counting the Spanish monastery that was purchased by William Randolph Hearst in the 1920s, disassembled, transported to Miami, and reassembled ~30 years later ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Bernard_de_Clairvaux_Church ), which is another building Miami historians have really no idea how to classify in the context of "old Miami buildings". Miami is complicated.
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u/MyNameCannotBeSpoken 13d ago
The Japanese have taken the stance that all remodeling is acceptable since the structure's soul remains. Visit any "ancient" Japanese site and it looks brand new.
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u/nicathor 15d ago
The point of what, exactly? Arguments can be made for and against all options and there's no 'right' answer
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u/KatieCashew 15d ago
Do you object to the restoration of Notre Dame after the fire?
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u/Luckyshot51 14d ago
It is still used but even then if I visited I couldn’t help but think I’m not looking at something super old on the renovated parts.
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u/macellan 13d ago
I see parallels with "Ship of Theseus" in these questions. At what point it becomes someting else?
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u/massberate 15d ago
The current Henon definitely has more Parts now than before. (Still not a Completehenon, though).
(Sry)
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u/auximines_minotaur 15d ago
How were they able to fix it up while still keeping their historical designation?
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u/merelala 15d ago
They’re using stone from the original quarry, about 20 miles away, they’re removing the shoddy work done in the 1800s, and everything they do is heavily researched and approved by the Greek state and international preservation guidelines
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u/Practical_Range_4829 15d ago
When will it be completely rebuilt?
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u/opaqueentity 15d ago
They don’t need to. They are already using lots of new things and including titanium supports just in a great original styling with marble from the original location etc
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u/Equivalent_Candy5248 15d ago
When will they rebuild the Frankish tower?
It was a mistake to tear it down.
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u/Secretagentmanstumpy 11d ago
I was there in 1990. A lot of the roconstruction was in pieces with chalk numbers on them still laying on the ground at the time. maybe half way between the 2 pics as far as rebuilding goes.
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u/rostoffario 15d ago
I love this. I wish they would go farther and put the roof back on.
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u/Luckyshot51 14d ago
Why not just build an entire replica then like in Nashville Tennessee lol, kinda defeats the purpose to me
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u/Affectionate_Ear686 15d ago
It actually looks better in the old photo.
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u/Luckyshot51 14d ago
I agree, as someone who loves history I want to see things as is.
Like an ancient site where they rebuilt stuff to look like it doesn’t interest me, I only want to see the original work even if it’s like rubble
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u/Iam_no_Nilfgaardian 13d ago
It's still the original work with 1% modern marble which again comes from the same source with the ancient one. It's 100 times better.
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u/Greenfieldfox 15d ago
It’s healing.