The Acropolis is a rocky high plateau as high as 156 m, and there are some ancient ruins of buildings that used to be the temple that became the historic center of Athens. Now the Acropolis is a testament to the history of the pride of Athens about the glory around 2,400 years ago.
The Acropolis, built 1,300 years old, is actually a beautiful little town, until the Persian kingdom destroyed it in 480 BC. A year later the Greek armies defeated the Persians and rebuilt the temples. Between 467 and 404 s.m the building was completed. In 1834 Athens became the capital of Greece, king Otto designated the Acropolis as a protected archaeological building. The 1975 Acropolis was restored. The largest ancient building in the Acropolis is the Parthenon Democracy in the field of politics that we know today is one of the contributions of the Hellenislic dynasty (650-30 BC) in the days of the ancient Greek empire, where civil rights to express opinions are freely recognized. As a characteristic pattern of Ancient Greek cities in the form of a city state, where there are open spaces for democratic activity and characterized by State buildings for the executive, legislative and judicial, one of them is the Acropolis. That is the tradition of athen which is not aimed at militarism, so that the cities of Ancient Greece were often attacked by the surrounding nations, especially from Persia.
Different from the Spartan tradition that is found in many medieval cities in the Bavaria or Germany now show the superiority of the nation through victory in war. The concept of democracy was re-formulated by the medieval French scholar, Montesquieu (1689-1755), in Esprit des Lois. The Acropolis was built during the reign of Emperor Pericles (495-429 BC) which was the Greek golden age in Athens. The Acropolis is located in an attractive location on the hills of Athens, and from here can be seen the views of Athens's trade fair, the Agora (a market) that is the center of the crowd, so the Acropolis symbolizes the goddess of wisdom, justice, passion and inspiration for the people of Athens. The main neighborhood of the Acropolis complex consists of temples forming a panoramic view of the city, including Erichteion, Parthenon, Nike and Propylaea. Erichteion is a new and very beautiful temple building as a substitute for the previous building which was destroyed in 480 BC due to war with the Persians led by Salamis. The temple built by architect Mnesicles between 421-405 BC and has a small, irregular, terraced size with an ionic column style is located on a site surrounded by sacred forests and burial ground.
There are three main characteristics of this temple:
1. there is a veranda
2. windows in every part of the door on the eastern verandah
3. a girl-shaped ornament on a column that serves as a support for the roof of the southern veranda.
This form is slightly slim and memorable as if being uphold the load of a roof.
Parthenon is a temple where there is a very large statue, made of ivory and gold. Parthenon is a very prominent building and is the center of the Acropolis. The Parthenon was built between 447-438 BC as the work of the architect Ictimus (Iktinos) and Callicrates (Kallikrates) and the sculptor Phidias (Pheidias).
The Parthenon building is said to be 'the greatest perfection of the work of Doric temple ever built', an appearance with the perfect proportions generated by the Venetian cyber-master. Nike is the smallest temple that for the Athenians is considered a lucky shrine for the city of Athens. Propylaea is a gate-shaped building by the architect of mnesicless, but the construction was not completed because of war with the Peloponnesia. The debris from the building can still be seen until now, but there are some buildings that have been completely lost, among others; Pinacotheca (an art gallery), Theater Dionysus, Odeon (a music room from Herod Atticus) and Stoa (a shelter and exhibition venue with the colonnade of Eumenes). The statue of Promachos by Pheidias is very large and made of bronze and dominates the face of the city.
The city of Athens, with the Acropolis as the first city in Ancient Greece that can still be seen today. At this time the wood began to be used as a building construction material and called by the term Carpenty in marble. Roman architect Marcus Vitrivius Pollio wrote extensively on the architecture derived from here, written in his book De Architettura consisting of 10 books. In it there is a principle of symmetry, harmony and proportion which is an extension of the principle of proportion, composition and precision of Ancient Greece called Entasia. This concept is more visible in the order of the architectural ornaments of the columns it finds.
The Doric and Ionic Order dates back to the Ancient Greeks which took the name of the two Greek tribes, the Doria (Italian and Sicilian Desert) and Ionian (Small Asian Derivatives), as a continuation of the Roman-era Corinthian order. And Vitrivius's work is known as the History of Clasicism in the theory of Continental architecture (mainland Europe) in the form of "greeko-Roman" after the Renaissance. There are several other buildings in the Acropolis are quite interesting, among others: Boulenterion; legislative building, Prytaneion; executive building, Haliaea; the judicative bases and Mycenaean Megaron as residential buildings or houses of leaders. Acropolis until now remains a reference in Urban Design. The architecture of the Acropolis is a reference to Greeko-Roman texts that had been formally rejected by the Bauhaus movement in Germany and several other countries in mainland Europe in the early 1900s, which had dominated mainland Europe since the Middle Ages after the Renaissance. The true basic theory of Greeko-Roman architecture by most historians and architectural critics is regarded as the most enduring architectural science as it appears throughout the ages, including in modern times today
