TV Program Description
Original PBS Broadcast Date: January 29, 2008
For 25 centuries the Parthenon has
been shot at, set on fire, rocked by earthquakes, looted for its sculptures,
almost destroyed by explosion, and disfigured by well-meaning renovations. It
has gone from temple, to church, to mosque, to munitions dump. (See a time
line of its checkered history.) What could be next? How about a scientific search for the
secrets of its incomparable beauty and astonishingly rapid construction? With
unprecedented access, NOVA unravels the
architectural and engineering mysteries of this celebrated ancient temple.
NOVA was granted access to the Greek government's
Acropolis Restoration Project—a multi-decade, multi-million-dollar effort
to rescue the Parthenon and other ancient structures on the Athenian Acropolis.
The Parthenon, in particular, was in danger of collapse. Over the last 32
years, experts have disassembled, analyzed, and painstakingly repaired
thousands of marble blocks, bringing to light the Parthenon's
astonishing, unsuspected design features and raising questions about how
exactly the ancient Greeks did it. (For more on the current restoration, see
Restoring the Ruin.)
How did they build this magnificent temple with such
incredible precision in a mere eight or nine years? How did they manage to
achieve apparent perfection in a building that contains almost no straight
lines or right angles? And, most baffling of all, how did they accomplish all
this apparently without using the tools that a modern architect would find
essential—a building plan or a blueprint?
Watch as NOVA takes on these mysteries with the help of
some of the foremost experts on ancient Greek architecture, including the chief
architect of the Acropolis Restoration Project, Manolis Korres, and scholars
Barbara Barletta of the University of Florida, Mark Wilson Jones of the
University of Bath, and Lothar Haselberger of the University of Pennsylvania.
For historical and cultural context, NOVA calls in Jeffrey
Hurwit of the University of Oregon. Hurwit is an expert on the significance of
the Acropolis throughout Greek history, particularly during its golden age,
when the Parthenon was built. Athens was then a young democracy, victorious in
the Persian wars, and enjoying the riches and power of its growing empire.
NOVA covers the Parthenon at the largest scale—and
the smallest. Manolis Korres tells how his investigation of tool marks on the
temple's marble blocks revealed the distinctive workmanship of some 200
different masons. From his study of these marks, Korres has also reconstructed
a whole range of ancient stonecutting tools that he believes are superior to
most of today's hand tools. Their exceptional sharpness and durability,
he thinks, helps explain how the ancient Greeks erected their architectural
masterpiece so quickly. (See Korres's stunning drawings detailing the
journey of a marble capital from quarry to column.)
The Parthenon's design conceals subtleties that at
first glance seem impossible given the techniques of the day. For example, the
columns have a slightly bulging profile that would require a compass with a
radius of nearly a mile to draw at full scale. The curve is apparently an
intentional optical refinement that lends the columns a certain muscular grace.
But how did the Greeks achieve it?
Lothar Haselberger tells NOVA how he literally saw the
light while visiting an unfinished Greek temple built a century and a half
after the Parthenon. When the sun shone across its walls at a grazing angle, a
remarkable series of diagrams suddenly appeared, carved almost invisibly into
the stone. This was the modern age's first glimpse of authentic Greek
"blueprints"—construction plans for the temple's
components, including its subtly curving columns. Haselberger's
astonishing discovery reveals ancient Greek building secrets that are as
ingenious, concise, and easy to use as anything in today's toolbox of
architectural techniques.
Program Transcript
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