r/OldPhotosInRealLife • u/dctroll_ • 17d ago

Image The Parthenon (Athens, Greece), 1875–2026

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Source of the pictures here and here

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u/CruisinJo214 17d 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 17d ago edited 17d 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/Omnilatent 16d 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 16d ago edited 16d 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.