Settlements were usually located with an eye for defense, as we have seen. Coastal towns might take advantage of peninsulas surrounded by the sea. For cities both coastal and inland, a hill or mountain top, easily fortified, was desirable; indeed, the term “acropolis,” or “high city” in Greek, was commonly used throughout the Greek world to designate such a feature. The Acropolis at Athens is thus by no means unique among naturally protected locations in the Greek world, but it is the best known.
The Athenian Acropolis is a natural broad-topped hill rising 90m above the city below. In the distance, the plain in which the city lies is enclosed by mountains, sacred elements in the landscape — Mount Hymettus with its double horned peak (south-east), Mount Pentelikos (northeast), Mount Parnes (north-west), and the Aigaleos ridge (west) — and the Aegean Sea (south). The earliest known use of the hilltop dates to the Bronze Age. Features of the Mycenaean citadel can still be seen, including a stretch of Cyclopean masonry belonging to the fortification wall. Only in the Archaic period did the primary function change from fortress to religious sanctuary, with the worship of Athena predominating. During medieval and early modern times, the Acropolis became a fortified village, the ancient buildings adapted for new needs. Drawings by western European travelers show us the Acropolis clustered with houses. With the naming of Athens as the capital of modern Greece in 1833, an intense interest arose in rediscovering the appearance of the city in Classical times: the newly created country wished to identify itself with ancient glory. The Acropolis was soon stripped of its medieval and Ottoman accretions; the four buildings that dominate the Acropolis today — the Parthenon, the Propylaia, the Temple of Athena Nike, and the Erechtheion — are all products of the Periklean building program of the second half of the fifth century BC (Figures 16.2 and 16.3). Major excavations followed in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, with Greek and German archaeologists exploring down to bedrock in order to clarify the architectural history of the site. Reconstruction and conservation of the ancient buildings continue to the present day, tasks all the more urgent with the increasingly destructive air pollution and acid rain of modern industrialized Athens.
World History
