PART 2:

CLASSIC
ARCHITECTURE
(HELLENIC PERIOD : GREEK ARCHITECTURE)

History of Architecture 1
Greece
GREEK
ARCHITECTURE
GEOLOGICAL
 The mainland and islands of Greece are rocky, with deeply
indented coastline, and rugged mountain ranges with few
substantial forests. The most freely available building
material is stone.
 In Greece the principal mineral product was marble, the
most monumental building material in existence, and one
which favours purity of line and refinement in detail.
 This material is found in great abundance in various parts
of Greece, e.g., in the mountains of Hymettus and
Pentelicus, a few miles from Athens, and in the islands of
Paros and Naxos.
CLIMATOLOGICAL CONDITION
 The climate of Greece is maritime, with both the coldness
of winter and the heat of summer tempered by sea
breezes.
 This led to a lifestyle where many activities took place
outdoors.
CLIMATOLOGICAL CONDITION
 Hence temples were placed on hilltops, their exteriors
designed as a visual focus of gatherings and processions,
 While theatres were often an enhancement of a naturally
occurring sloping site where people could sit, rather than a
containing structure.
 Colonnades encircling buildings or surrounding courtyards
provided shelter from the sun and from sudden winter
storms.
CLIMATOLOGICAL CONDITION
 The light of Greece may be another important factor in the
development of the particular character of Ancient Greek
architecture.
 The light is often extremely bright, with both the sky and the
sea vividly blue. The clear light and sharp shadows give a
precision to the details of landscape, pale rocky outcrops
and seashore. This clarity is alternated with periods of haze
that varies in colour to the light on it.
CLIMATOLOGICAL CONDITION
 In this characteristic environment, the Ancient Greek
architects constructed buildings that were marked by
precision of detail. The gleaming marble surfaces were
smooth, curved, fluted or ornately sculpted to reflect the
sun, cast graded shadows and change in colour with the
ever-changing light of day.
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY
 The religion of Ancient Greece was a form of nature worship
that grew out of the beliefs of earlier cultures. However,
unlike earlier cultures, man was no longer perceived as
being threatened by nature, but as its sublime product. The
natural elements were personified as gods of completely
human form, and very human behaviour.
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY
The home of the gods was thought to be Olympus, the
highest mountain in Greece.
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY
Zeus, the supreme god and ruler of the sky;
Hera, queen of gods, Zeus wife and goddess of marriage and family;
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY
Athena, goddess of wisdom;
Poseidon, god of the sea;
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY
Demeter, goddess of the earth;
Apollo, god of the sun, law, reason, music and poetry;
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY
Hestia, goddess of fire
Heracles, god of strength, power
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY
Dionysus, god of wine, feasting, revelry
Nike, goddess of victory
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY
Artemis, goddess of the moon, the hunt and the wilderness;
Aphrodite, goddess of love;
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY
Ares, God of war;
Hermes, god of commerce and medicine,
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY
Hephaestus, god of fire and metalwork.
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY

Worship, like many other activities, was done in

community, in the open. However, by 600 BC, the gods
were often represented by large statues and it was
necessary to provide a building in which each of these
could be housed. This led to the development of
temples.
RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY
The architecture of the Ancient Greeks, and in particular,
TEMPLE ARCHITECTURE, responds to these challenges
with a passion for beauty, and for order and symmetry
which is the product of a continual search for perfection,
rather than a simple application of a set of working rules.
 SOCIAL AND POLITICAL
 The early inhabitants were known to the ancients under
the name of Pelasgi. Their civilization belonged to the
bronze age, as is evident from the remains of it found at
different points round the Aegean sea, in Crete, at
Hissarlik in the Troad, at Mycenae, Tiryns, and
elsewhere.
 SOCIAL AND POLITICAL
 As regards the people themselves, it is clear that the
national games and religious festivals united them in
reverence for their religion, and gave them that love for
music, the drama, and the fine arts, and that emulation
in manly sports and contests for which they were
distinguished.
 It should be remembered that the people led an open-air
life, for the public ceremonies and in many cases the
administration of justice were carried on in the open air.
EARLY DEVELOPMENT
The domestic architecture of ancient Greece employed:

Walls of sun dried clay bricks or wooden framework filled

with fibrous material such as straw or seaweed covered
with clay or plaster, on a base of stone which protected
the more vulnerable elements from damp.
EARLY DEVELOPMENT
The domestic architecture of ancient Greece employed:

Roofs were probably of thatch with eaves which overhung

the permeable walls. It is probable that many early
houses had an open porch or "pronaos" above which rose
a low pitched gable or pediment.
EARLY DEVELOPMENT
The domestic architecture of ancient Greece employed:

Since the Ancient Greeks did not have royalty, they did not
build palaces. The evolution that occurred in architecture
was towards public building, first and foremost the
temple, rather than towards grand domestic architecture
such as had evolved in Crete.
 HELLENIC PERIOD
The Hellenic Period contains all the principal temples and
monuments which were erected between the years B.C.
700 and the Roman occupation B.C. 146.
ACROPOLIS

 Many of the Greek cities were upon or in the

immediate vicinity of a hill which was known as
the Acropolis (Greek = an upper city), and
formed a citadel upon which the principal
temples or treasure-houses were erected for
safety.

Heliopolis -City of the Sun

Necropolis – City of the dead
Persepolis – Persian City
TYPES OF BUILDINGS
The rectangular temple is the most common and best-known
form of Greek public architecture.

Some Greek temples appear to have been oriented

astronomically. The temple was generally part of a
religious precinct known as the acropolis.

According to Aristotle, “the site should be a spot seen far and

wide, which gives good elevation to virtue and towers over the
neighbourhood”. Small circular temples, tholos were also
constructed, as well as small temple-like buildings that served
as treasuries for specific groups of donors.
 ACROPOLIS
a citadel (a stronghold into which people could go for shelter during a battle) in ancient
Greek towns
ACROPOLIS PLAN
CHARACTERISTICS OF GREEK TEMPLES
They were built with special regard to external effect, and
were ornamented with sculpture of the highest class in
order to form fitting shrines for the deities in whose honour
they were erected.

They were generally placed in a "temenos" or sacred

enclosure, and consisted of a "naos" or cell, usually oblong
in plan, in which was placed the statue of the god or
goddess ; a treasury or chamber beyond and a front and
rear portico, with flanking colonnades, the whole generally
raised on a stylobate of three steps.
CHARACTERISTICS OF GREEK TEMPLES
In the larger temples were internal colonnades of columns
placed over each other to support the roof.

On the two end facades above the columns a triangular

shaped pediment, usually but not always filled with
sculpture, terminated the simple span roof.
CHARACTERISTICS OF GREEK TEMPLES
These roofs were constructed of timber and covered with
marble slabs ; the ends of the overlapped joints being
provided with ante-fixae at the eaves. The door was almost
always placed in the centre of the end wall, behind the
portico of columns, and frequently planned so that the sun
might enter and light up the statue opposite.
CHARACTERISTICS OF GREEK TEMPLES
The general absence of windows in the temples, has given
rise, to many theories as to how light was admitted. The
method of lighting by a clerestory concealed in the roof.
Artificial illumination by means of lamps may also have
been employed.
CHARACTERISTICS OF GREEK TEMPLES
The temple was occasionally "hypaethral," that is to say,
there was an opening in the roof which admitted air and
light to the central portion of the naos or cella.
CHARACTERISTICS OF GREEK TEMPLES
The temple was the house of the local god, being merely a
glorified dwelling-house.

Temple of Athena Nike

DIFFERENT KINDS OF TEMPLE
The different kinds of temples are classified, by the
disposition of their columns. The different methods of
spacing the columns one from the other is shown:
 Distyle in antis at one end (the simplest form, having two
columns between antae).

Temple of Rhamnus
DIFFERENT KINDS OF TEMPLE
 Distyle in antis at both ends.

Anta – post or pillars on

either side of the doorway

Doric Temple of Artemis at Eleusis

DIFFERENT KINDS OF TEMPLE
 Prostyle tetrastyle (a front portico of four columns).
Ex. Doric Temple at Selinus, Sicily
DIFFERENT KINDS OF TEMPLE
 Amphiprostyle tetrastyle (front and rear porticos of four
columns).
Ex. Ionic Temple on the Ilissus and
Temple of Nike-Apteros
DIFFERENT KINDS OF TEMPLE
 Peripteral circular (a ring of columns surrounding a circular
cell).
Ex. Philipeion at Olympia
The Tholos at Epidauros
DIFFERENT KINDS OF TEMPLE
 Peripteral hexastyle (a temple surrounded by columns, the
porticos at each end having six).
 Ex. The Theseion Athens
Temple of Neptune, Paestum,
Temple of Apollo at Bassae
DIFFERENT KINDS OF TEMPLE
 Peripteral octastyle (as last, but with eight columns to
each portico).
Ex. the Parthenon Athens
DIFFERENT KINDS OF TEMPLE
 Pseudoperipteral (having columns attached to cella walls,
a favourite form afterwards adopted by the Romans)
Ex. Temple of Jupiter at Agrigentum
DIFFERENT KINDS OF TEMPLE
 Dipteral octastyle (double rows of columns surrounding
temple, having ranges of eight at each end).
Ex. Temple of Jupiter Olympius, Athens
Temple of Diana at Ephesus
DIFFERENT KINDS OF TEMPLE
 Pseudodipteral octastyle (as last, with the inner range left
out).
Ex. Great Doric Temple of Selinus, Sicily
DIFFERENT KINDS OF TEMPLE
 Dipteral decastyle (as ix., but with ten columns at ends).
Ex. Temple of Apollo Didymaeus, near Miletus.
 Octagonal. Ex. Tower of the Winds Athen
 Irregular planning.
Ex. Erechtheion, Athens, The Propylcea, Athens, Teleskrion
at Eleusis.
 Intercolumnation - spacing
between columns

 Superposition of columns)- the

placing of one order above
another

 Fenestration - the arrangement

and design of windows in a building.
 ORDERS: DORIC, IONIC, CORINTHIAN
The varieties of temples described were erected in either the Doric, Ionic, or
Corinthian style
ARCHITECTURAL ORDERS
 By the end of the 7th century BC, two major architectural
styles, or orders, emerged that dominated Greek
architecture for centuries: Doric and Ionic.
 The Doric order developed on the Greek mainland and in
southern Italy and Sicily, while the Ionic order developed a
little later than the Doric order, in Ionia and on some of the
Greek islands.
ARCHITECTURAL ORDERS
TEMPLE FACADE WAS MADE UP OF THREE MAIN PARTS:
The Steps, the Columns, and the Entablature (the part
that rested on the columns).
 The topmost of which was called the stylobate,

 And each column typically consisted of a base, shaft,

and capital.
 The entablature consisted of an architrave (plain
horizontal beam resting on the columns), a frieze,
which corresponded to the beams supporting the
ceiling, and a cornice, a set of decorative moldings that
overhung the parts below.
DORIC
DORIC
 The Doric order was the
simplest and sturdiest of
the three orders. Its
tapering columns rest
directly on the stylobate.
DORIC
 Doric columns have no base.
Shallow parallel grooves called
flutes rise from the bottom to the
top of the shaft and emphasize
its function as a vertical support.
 Sharp ridges divide the flutes. At
the top of the shaft a fluted ring
called the necking provides a
transition to the column’s capital.
DORIC
 The Doric capital
consists of a rounded,
cushionlike element
called the echinus, and
a horizontal square
element called the
abacus, which bears
the load of the building
above.
DORIC
 The Doric architrave is
a plain beam left
undecorated so as not
to disguise its
function.
 Above it, the Doric
frieze consists of
alternating triglyphs
and metopes.
DORIC
 Triglyphs are thick
grooved panels that
help support the weight
of the structure above.
 Metopes are thinner
panels that do no work
in holding up the
temple and hence
invite decoration in the
form of painting or
sculpture.
DORIC
 Above the horizontal
cornice a low, pitched
roof rises to produce a
triangular pediment at
either end of the
temple.
 Sculpture fills the
pediments of many
Doric temples.
DORIC
 The shaft has normally an outward curvature of profile
called “entasis”.
DORIC
 The oldest well-preserved Doric temple is the Temple of
Hera at Olympia, although there were temples built
earlier in the Doric style.
DORIC
 The Parthenon, a temple dedicated to the goddess
Athena Parthenos (the Virgin Athena), stands on the
Acropolis high above Athens, Greece.
 ARCHITECTURAL ORDER: IONIC

TO BE CONTINUED…