Why is the Parthenon in ruins? The night in 1687 when it blew apart

What was the Parthenon before it was a ruin?

The Parthenon was built between 447 and 438 BC. Its architects were Ictinus and Callicrates, and Phidias was in charge of the whole sculptural programme. It was the great temple of Athena on the Acropolis.

But it didn't stay frozen in antiquity. Centuries later it became a church, dedicated first to Holy Wisdom (Hagia Sophia) and then to the Virgin, and in the 11th century it was the cathedral of Athens. Under the Ottomans it became a mosque. Each age adapted it to its own faith and its own life, which is why it reached the 17th century as a building in use, not a picture-postcard monument.

A footnote with a Catalan accent. In 1380, King Peter IV of Aragon, to whom the duchies of Athens and Neopatria had just sworn homage, ordered twelve crossbowmen to be paid to guard the "castell de Cetines", as the Catalans called the Acropolis, because it was "la pus richa joya qui al mont sia", the richest jewel in the world. The line is often quoted as praise of the Parthenon. But the king was talking about the castle, and he never saw it.

What happened in 1687?

Venice was besieging the Acropolis, which was held by an Ottoman garrison. Morosini was in command of the Venetians. His engineers placed fifteen guns on the Hill of the Muses, now known as Philopappos Hill, eight more on the Pnyx, and four mortars at the foot of the Areopagus, the rock right by the entrance to the Acropolis. The figures are approximate: the historian Léon de Laborde was already warning that neither the number nor the calibre is certain. The mortars lobbed their bombs over the walls of the fortress.

Inside, the Ottomans had turned the Parthenon into a powder magazine. An Italian officer in the besiegers' camp wrote that the Turks had stored all their riches in the temple, as if in a place of refuge, and the pasha his ammunition.

On 25 September a bomb blew up a small powder store in the Propylaea, the grand gateway to the Acropolis. It was a foretaste.

The next day, the 26th, about half an hour after nightfall, another bomb fell into the Parthenon's gunpowder. The blast shook the surrounding area and split the temple in two. According to a Venetian gazette, the fire burned for two days.

Who fired the bomb that destroyed the Parthenon?

This is where the sources part company, and it's best not to choose for them.

Laborde, following the diary of an officer called Sobiewolsky, says a deserter told the besiegers that the powder was in the temple, and that a lieutenant from Lüneburg adjusted the mortars' aim and scored a hit after just a few shots. The Italian officer, on the other hand, writes that the bomb fell "a caso", by chance. And the Venetian gazette credits it to the battery of the Count of San Felice.

So when you read that "a skilled gunner" blew up the Parthenon, bear in mind that it's only one version. The other one says pure luck.

The same Italian officer left another line that says a lot: even in ruins, the temple left him spellbound.

What one witness wrote

In the besiegers' camp was a Swedish woman, Anna Åkerhjelm, lady-in-waiting to Countess Königsmarck. In a letter to her brother she wrote that "His Excellency the Marshal", Königsmarck, had destroyed most unwillingly that temple which had stood for "3000 years", and that it could never be raised again. Her sums came out long: since it was finished, in 438 BC, a little over two thousand one hundred years had gone by. But you can understand the sorrow.

According to the same letter, the garrison surrendered after eight days of resistance.

The horses that turned to dust

The story has a bitter epilogue. After the victory, Morosini wanted a souvenir of his triumph: the horses pulling the goddess's chariot, high up on the pediment. He had them lowered. According to the Italian officer, the workmen bungled it, dropped them, and the horses were reduced to dust.

Fact or legend?

• Fact: on the night of 26 September 1687 a Venetian bomb fell into the gunpowder stored in the Parthenon and split it in two. The day before, another powder store had blown up in the Propylaea.
• Conflicting versions: who aimed. A deserter and a lieutenant from Lüneburg, according to the diary Laborde follows; chance, according to an Italian officer; the Count of San Felice's battery, according to a Venetian gazette.
• Popular simplification: "a skilled gunner destroyed it". That's one version, not a proven fact.
• Testimony: Anna Åkerhjelm's "3000 years". It was actually about two thousand one hundred.
• Misattributed line: "la pus richa joya qui al mont sia" wasn't said of the Parthenon, but of the castle on the Acropolis.

And after the explosion?

The ruin kept changing. In the early 19th century the British ambassador Lord Elgin took away about half of the sculpture the temple still had. The two sides tell it differently: for the British Museum, he did it with permission from the Ottoman authorities, and a parliamentary committee declared it legal in 1816; for the Greek Ministry of Culture, it was looting that seriously damaged the monument. A traveller who saw it, Edward Dodwell, lamented that the cornice was thrown down to lower the metopes.

Once Greece was independent, the architect Leo von Klenze's plan for the Acropolis set out to make it purely an archaeological site and to clear away everything later than antiquity. Among the things removed in those clearances was the small mosque that stood inside the Parthenon. So what you see today is the work of many centuries: an ancient temple, an explosion, and the decisions of those who came after.

How to see it from below

Climb the Areopagus: from the top, the Parthenon should appear above the entrance to the Acropolis. Then look across at Philopappos Hill, crowned by an ancient monument. In the autumn of 1687 the batteries fired from that hill and from the Pnyx; the mortars stood at the foot of the rock you're on.

Where to hear it

Podtour tells this story on Athens' free route, Around the Acropolis: twelve stops round the rock, without going into the site. On top of the Areopagus, the stop "Church, Mosque, Gunpowder Store: 1687" tells the story of the explosion, and the next, "Who Aimed from Those Hills, and What Was Lost?", covers the batteries, the rival versions and the horses. The same route tells you, at another stop, what happened to the marbles.

Peter IV's line is told on Plaka, Anafiotika and the Catalans of the Acropolis. And our Athens guide covers the practical side of your trip.

Further reading

• Léon de Laborde, Athènes aux XVe, XVIe et XVIIe siècles, vol. II (Paris, 1854), with the Italian officer's letter, Anna Åkerhjelm's letter and the Venetian gazette (in French, Italian and Swedish). https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_ORBCAAAAcAAJ
• Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports, "Parthenon", Odysseus portal. http://odysseus.culture.gr/h/2/eh251.jsp?obj_id=912
• Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports; Ioanna Venieri, "Acropolis of Athens — History", Odysseus portal. http://odysseus.culture.gr/h/3/eh351.jsp?obj_id=2384
• British Museum, "The Parthenon Sculptures". https://www.britishmuseum.org/about-us/british-museum-story/contested-objects-collection/parthenon-sculptures
• Acropolis Restoration Service (YSMA), "History of older interventions". https://www.ysma.gr/en/restoration/history-of-older-interventions/
• Antoni Rubió i Lluch (ed.), Documents per l'historia de la cultura catalana mig-eval, vol. I (Barcelona, 1908), doc. CCCXI (in Catalan). https://archive.org/details/documentsperlhi00llucgoog