The Rise of Athens: Building the Glory of Ancient Greece | FULL DOCUMENTARY

Athens and its region, with its famous port of Piraeus, nowadays has a population of 3.7 million. Covering an area of 428 square kilometers, this cosmopolitan metropolis, home to almost a third of its population, is Greece's largest city. The port of Piraeus is one of the major ports for international trade, but also the largest passenger port in Europe, with more than 8 million passengers a year. Athens is one of Europe's leading tourist destinations, and as one of the oldest cities in the world, it never ceases to fascinate. So how did it all begin? The story starts with a simple hill in Attica, a rocky promontory that forms a natural shelter for the few who take refuge there in times of danger. They build a small fort there, the better to defend themselves. All around the rock of the Acropolis, you have to imagine different groups of people that we call tribal groups. It's a very basic way of life, with agriculture and livestock scattered between a few little hamlets. In the Bronze Age, the site is part of the Mycenaean civilization. Safety remains a major concern, and the Acropolis rock is surrounded by a 3 to 4 meter thick wall over an area 310 meters long by 125 meters wide. This is the terrace where the king built a monumental palace. Almost nothing remains of it, but it may have resembled the Mycenaean palace of Knossos, 350 kilometers away in Crete. This Mycenaean palace must have been very similar to the lost palace of Athens. We can see that, at the time, the stone workers all randomly assembled. The Mycenaeans were the Greek world's first major civilization, and characterized by their fortified architecture, especially by these gigantic walls that make up the palace, and that we call Cyclopean. Both the walls and the columns are all painted in bright colors. They took great pains with those colors and decorations. The murals all are of scenes of war or of hunting. Back in Athens, a crucial question arises. What about water? The first inhabitants built a spectacular well. They dig out a 34 meter high crevice. They build huge wooden staircases and a platform to reach the groundwater. But it's a failure. The whole edifice collapses on them. Their second attempt works out better. Instead of a single huge well, they dig multiple small wells less than 3 meters deep, shallow and safe. A wall, a few houses, a few wells, some tombs. Far too little to merit the status of a city, but it's what will determine the basic outlines. The disappearance of the Mycenaean civilization is very mysterious. I suspect it was down to internal rebellions. The Mycenaean palace has disappeared. Up on the Acropolis, only its walls remain. The hamlets have evolved into separate villages, too easy to attack. If they want better living conditions, they'll have to unite. It's a process that will take 600 years. But the decision is made to merge into a single unified city with the same laws, the same duties and the same cults. By 800 BC, Athens exists officially. And this voluntary unification of its inhabitants will change everything. Of course, in ancient times, every city was under the protection of a god. According to mythology, two gods had their eyes on the city and its territory. Athena, goddess of wisdom and war, and Poseidon, god of the sea. It was up to the assembly of the gods to vote for their preferred candidate. But Zeus refused to choose between his daughter and his brother and would not cast his vote. The goddesses all voted unanimously for Athena, and they outnumbered the gods by just one vote. Thus, Athena became the mother goddess of the city, and Athens her most beautiful sanctuary. During the Iron Age, Athens, now under the protection of Athena, can truly develop. The Acropolis, the sacred hill that serves as a natural refuge, will be the starting point for this development. The rocky promontory covers an area of 270 meters by 150 meters and rises 156 meters above sea level. And its beginnings are sacred ones. The construction of a shrine dedicated to Athena, housing an altar, a temple and a statue. It most likely continues to the north with an agora, a large public square where people gather to solve the problems of the city. At the foot of the hill, both shops and residential areas start to develop. Ancient Athens is still tiny compared to the modern metropolis. It occupies, between its walls, just two kilometers from east to west and a little less from north to south. A few men live within the sacred space, probably the elite, if the wealth of the tombs found on the Acropolis are anything to go by. We have no certified figures, but it's reasonable to assume that the initial population is only a few thousand with no foreigners yet and few slaves. Iron has now appeared in the city-state and farmers are delighted to have axes and metal tools and the opportunity to produce and earn more. Athenian society is still rooted in the earth. It is ruled by aristocrats and they're the wealthiest landowners. One thing that does not change, though, in both the 8th and 7th centuries BC, is the big problem of water. The population has grown and so has its needs. It is a hot, dry country and the city's three rivers just aren't enough. There are two possible solutions. First, to use the wells that have been there since ancient times. Secondly, to collect rainwater in large half-buried jars to start with, but better still, in high-capacity cisterns inspired by the shape of these jars, underground cisterns in the form of giant bottles. Their mouths are less than one meter across for the first two meters, until they widen out to three or four meters. The inhabitants don't stop at that, though. Soon they are connecting several cisterns together by a gallery. The wealthiest households own four or five of them, but that is still not enough to satisfy the entire population. People still lack water. The people need water. It has to be brought from afar, from where there is a lot of it. The answer is to build a big aqueduct that will bring it right into the heart of the city. They could build very good aqueducts as long as it was all gravity flow. From the start down to the terminus had to be a continuous slope, so they could and did bring water from 10, 15, 20 kilometers away from the city. It's here, in the southeast corner of the agora, that the aqueduct ends. This place, which features the remains of a Roman fountain, is certainly the site of the first public building where running water is free to all. The fountain with nine spouts is the Western world's very first public fountain. The fountain looks just like a regular building of 120 square meters. Consisting of a main room marked out by three Doric columns and flanked by two smaller rooms. Water flows continuously into a basin via nine lion-headed orifices. The Iliakronos fountain is the first public fountain in Athens, but also one of the few places where women meet up and can make friends as they fill their vases. The great novelty at the time was building this great fountain that brought water from the mountain to the center of Athens. It wasn't brought into the homes, but it was revolutionary because you didn't need your own well or cistern, and there was free water for everyone. Although construction of the agora has just begun, it's already seen as a public space, and it's natural that the city's first fountain should be installed there. In the 6th century BC, the Parthenon is still a sacred place. Beneath the current building, we found traces of an ancient temple. There's always been a temple on the Acropolis. Throughout history, it has been destroyed and rebuilt several times. To build it, a two-square-kilometer plateau had to be built, leveled, and filled. Then, 8,000 cubic meters of limestone blocks, each weighing an average of two tons, had to be brought in. It was a simple temple with columns that were simple as well, but its size was staggering. 1,570 square meters, with 6 columns on the front and 14 on the sides. The earliest temple, of which nothing remains but the foundations, must have been 75 meters long by 30 meters wide, much bigger than the Parthenon we know. As the city grows, so does the social turmoil within it. In the 6th century BC, discontent is mounting, as simple peasants are forced into slavery by debt, and people are fearing the worst. The citizens of Athens are getting tired of the tyrants who've now come to power. The social tensions obviously come from the poorer peasants who are simply worried for their freedom. But they have a great influence, because there are a lot more of them than the rich landowners. Once the tyrants were thrown out of Athens, they needed a new form of government in the city. And they didn't trust the old aristocratic families, which had caused all the trouble. So they invented a new system, whereby your significance in the state depended on which tribe you belonged to, not which family. And that allowed everybody to be more equal in sharing the government. It is to the great judge Cleisthenes that we owe the reforms that will be the basis of the new regime. Cleisthenes is from a very important aristocratic family, and is someone who allows the demos, the people, to hold some power. 2,500 years ago, by increasing the number of citizens who could vote, Athens invented the new regime of the future, democracy. The change can even be seen in the layout of the city. The agora, where the city held its debates, is moved to the foot of the mound called Kolonos Agoraios. And the reforms bring with them new buildings out at the edge of the city. Cleisthenes' reforms entrusted political power to two bodies. On the one hand, to a council called the boule. It met in this square civic building with its 23-meter sides. It was what we would call a senate. They called it a voulis, or boule. And the building where they were housed was a bouleuterion. And every year, 500 Athenians would be picked to fill the senate just for one year. Along with this boule comes something entirely new, the people's assembly, or ecclesia. Since it is the council that makes the laws, gradually the ecclesia starts voting them in. That means that little by little, the people start to have some power over the institutions. Those with a vote are no longer exclusively the wealthiest, although voters still represent only 10% of the population. All the citizens came together every 10 days to either approve or vote down whatever the senate had approved. That was also along the side of the Agora square once democracy was invented. Laws and decrees were prepared on papyrus or on white wooden tablets. The boule was where the city's archives were kept. There are remains, they're mostly foundations, but we have descriptions that tell us where it should be. We have a large square building about 30 meters on a side, which seems to be big enough for the 500 participants. They were the ones who were appointed that year. It could be any male citizen, could be a member of the boule. No women, no foreigners, no slaves, of course. The new Agora is also home to a new feature of the city, the tholos. Circular in shape, with six central columns, it houses the city's sacred fire. It also serves as a residence for foreign ambassadors, and even has a kitchen to provide them with splendid dinners. And it's here that public honors and accolades are handed out. In the 5th century BC, Athens faces a terrifying danger, the immense Persian Empire. You either submit or you resist. Athens dares to take on the Persians, and leads the Greeks to victory in the Battle of Marathon. Yet Themistocles, recently elected as head of state, fears that peace may not last. The only solution is to open Athens to the sea. Athens' naval power was created as a result of one man, Themistocles, who insisted that the Athenians build a fleet. He was very farsighted and a real statesman, and Athenian power for the next century or more was based entirely on its navy. At this time, Athens only has a handful of merchant vessels. Piraeus offers the advantage of three inlets to the surrounding land. Themistocles will both develop and strengthen the site. The Piraeus is a natural place because it's got a fortifiable hill, and it has three excellent, well-protected harbors. And it was only 7 or 8 kilometers from Athens. It is neither too far nor too close, so there are many advantages in the Athenians choosing the Piraeus site at that time. No Greek knew whether or not the Persians would come back, and the Athenians were lucky because they found a great deal of silver in 484 BC, and Themistocles persuaded them not just to spend it, but to use it investing in 200 ships. Piraeus will be divided into several sectors, with particular importance given to the military port, with its wooden shipyards and its berths for triremes. To the west of the military port stood the international market, the emporion, with its five arches. A covered area for trade and commercial transactions, as well as for storage. There's the grain silo, known as the long stoa, where imported grain is stored. The maritime stock exchange, known as the digma, where the bankers and stockbrokers work. And nearby, the residential area, with its streets laid out in a grid. This grid layout will spread to all the new cities. It's geometrical, the streets are perpendicular to one another, the bigger ones intersecting with the smaller ones. A land battle against the Persians would be doomed to failure since they have up to one million men at their command. At the military port, they're turning out ten times the number of triremes. They had just twenty, now there are two hundred. As warships, these triremes are a real innovation. To scupper the enemy before boarding him, the spurs above the waterline are reinforced with metal plates. The Mistiklis manages to lure the Persian fleet, three times larger than the Greek one, into some narrow straits. It's a splendid victory. At Salamis, the Greeks led the Persians into a deadly trap, and the whole of Athens rejoices. When the Athenians beat the Persians at the sea battle of Salamis, it made them the leading city of ancient Greece. Now the Athenians rule the waves, but their city has suffered greatly. Of course, in 480 to 479 BC, when the Persians leave the Athens region, Athens is totally devastated. Athens is set on fire, the Acropolis is destroyed, completely razed. It's a disaster. The most urgent thing is to protect access to the sea. The corridor that links Athens to Piraeus will be enclosed by two walls, the Long Walls. They will enclose the two urban centers, both Athens and Piraeus. Thus, when facing danger, the inner city will have a protected outer harbor and can never be threatened with starvation. It was a kind of big corridor that connected the two cities. So it was a complex fortified site, with two heads, one on the plain and one on the sea. At the time of Pericles, these Long Walls, seven meters high, enclosed a narrow corridor 183 meters wide. This was because such a small space could be defended by just a few men and was easily accessed from both sides. In times of peace, this access to the sea has another advantage, to solve the city's food problems. Athens will be able to import the food it lacks and even export its products, including its much-loved ceramics. Before long, half the wheat consumed in Athens is being imported from Evia, Thrace and Egypt. But also from Greek cities in the Bosphorus and the kingdoms of the northern shores of the Black Sea. The Athenian silver currency rules the Mediterranean market, and the combined incomes of Piraeus and the silver mines are estimated at 65% of the city's budget. Athens is now encircled by its wall and its nine gates. Within, the city itself is irregularly built, with both wide and narrow streets that wind as they will around the hill. In the working-class neighborhoods, the houses are very cramped, with narrow doors and windows. The light comes from the courtyard, which is the heart of the house's activities. There's just a ground floor with one or two tiny rooms. The walls are made of wood, raw brick and pebbles, bound by a mortar made of rough earth. Mostly the walls were made of sun-dried mud brick, set on a stone foundation, because you have to have it above the water or above damp. But the walls themselves were very easy to make and very quick and very cheap, because it was just mud. As long as you plastered it and kept a roof on it, it would last forever. People just throw their sewage into the street, and since the streets aren't paved, when it rains, things get pretty sticky. The Greeks did not pave their roads as much as the Romans did. Mostly it's just packed gravel, it's just pebbles and earth, packed down, and the roads build up very quickly over the centuries. In Piraeus, there's no hill to get in the way. Down there on the plain, everything is neatly mapped out. Athens is to undergo spectacular development in the 5th century BC. Athens is a whole agglomeration of 140 villages or small towns around Athens, in Attica. They are all important and all contribute to the Athenian force. In an area of 2,650 square meters, it will now have 400,000 inhabitants. Its people will be saying they've never seen such a thriving city. So to whom do we owe this golden age? To Pericles, one of Themistocles' successors as ruler of Athens, who has big plans for the city. When the wars were over, the Greeks feared a return of the Persians. So a lot of Greeks joined the Athenians to form a defensive league, which will be called the League of Delos. Delos is an island. It's a neutral territory where the 200 cities that finance the Maritime Defense League all keep their money. It's already a foretaste of the future Athenian Empire. After a while, Pericles convinces his allies that it would be better, for safety's sake, to move the war treasure at Delos to Athens. The money will be used to start a major construction program. From 445 BC, they decide to rebuild the Acropolis. And they will start by building the most famous temple in the world, the Parthenon. Pericles is so proud of his homeland, and so devoted to his city, that he wants a perfect building to the glory of Athens. The Parthenon will be considered by the Greeks to be the most beautiful monument ever built on Earth. It celebrates the arts with splendor. When the Athenians could build the buildings on the Acropolis, the big marble temples, they controlled most of the resources of the Eastern Mediterranean. So that they could hire the best architects, the best sculptors, the best painters. This temple, dedicated to Athena, will be a monumental work of 69 meters 51 by 30 meters 88. For the overall artistic conception of the Parthenon, it was under the control of Phidias, who was Pericles' advisor and choice. The structure of the temple is surrounded by 46 columns. There are 8 on the front, and 17 on each side. These 46 outer columns are each 10 meters high. A raised stone platform supports the walls of a rectangular room that has been divided in two. The statue of Athena, standing on a pedestal, and with its impressively huge dimensions, will dominate the larger room. The man who was the creative genius behind the program was a man called Phidias, who was both a sculptor and designed the plans of the buildings that were built. He was also the sculptor who made the golden ivory cult statue that stood in the Acropolis. The other, smaller room housed both the war treasure from Delos and the offerings made to the divinity. Nothing is as it appears, and the lines of the Parthenon appear to be perfect. In reality, to achieve this perfection, the architect had no choice but to correct the perspectives slightly. To give you an idea, we've deliberately exaggerated them. If the monument had been built on flat ground, this is how it would have looked from the ground, its columns slightly splayed at the top. The Greeks used two vanishing points to compensate for the slope of the ground, thus slightly bending the columns inwards. What's more, the corner columns are thicker, to make them stand out. Otherwise, they would have appeared thinner than the others. It's obvious that the Greeks of the 5th century BC were absolute masters of the laws of optics and perspective. These corrections are the greatest strength of the architecture of the Parthenon. It's not the straight line that makes the Parthenon a masterpiece. It's the deviation from the straight. So the reality is one that belongs to the eye, and not to the constructed world. To build this remarkable edifice, all in marble, they have to overcome several difficulties. The nearest marble quarries are 16 kilometers away, on Mount Penteli. Every single block is pre-cut on site, and roughly shaped with just some notches for lifting it. Each weighs between 2 and 5 tons. The block is loaded onto a cart pulled by oxen. We know that an ox can cover 1.5 kilometers per hour, so we can deduce that it took between 5 and 7 hours to bring each block down to the Acropolis. On the western slopes of the Acropolis, a second team takes delivery of the blocks. A ramp has been created to carry these heavy blocks of stone, which will now have to be hoisted to the top of the hill. A third team is tasked with unloading and setting up the block. But how did the ancients manipulate so precisely these blocks that weighed tons? We've known for millennia how to transport heavy loads, and the technique doesn't vary much. We pull the load over a flat surface, and we raise the blocks with levers. Back in the 6th century BC, though, those Greek inventors caused a technical revolution by inventing the pulley and hoist. By coming up with several systems that use two or three pulleys in unison, they succeed in increasing human strength dramatically. The ancient Greeks devised some extraordinary lifting machines. Let's take a look at some of them. To lift heavy loads, they used a multiplied winch consisting of two large masts joined together at the top. To raise or lower the load, there were two ropes linked to a hoist system that reduced the strain. This machine could lift two ton blocks to a height of six meters. To save time, you also had to be able to move along the structure you were building. So how did they manage that? This mobile lifting device was mounted on rollers so it could be moved sideways. In this way, the entire structure was assembled on a mobile platform. The feet of the two big masts were hinged onto each side of the platform. And there were lifting machines that could work on several scaffolds at once. Let's take a look at these strange beasts. The four-masted elevator consisted of a scaffold of four vertical beams, and its upper platform supported a capstan winch. Weights of up to two tons could be hoisted up inside it. It was the Greeks' unique knowledge of mathematics and engineering that gave birth to the Parthenon. There are a thousand workers there on the site. Each column consists of ten to twelve blocks held in place by a metal stud. Once the column is mounted, a team of stonemasons completes the finishing. Nowadays, restoration techniques are careful to reproduce these ancient techniques faithfully. And once an element is in place, we too sculpt it. Forty-six columns, each ten meters high, had to be erected to build this temple destined to become the most beautiful emblem of classical architecture. The Parthenon has the particularity of being a Doric-style temple into which elements of the Ionic style were integrated. The Doric style is very plain, and the columns have no base. They're very imposing, and the design of their capitals is simple. The Ionic style, however, features a molded column base and a lushly coiled capital at the top. It's a more refined style that is more delicate and more slender. Parthenon combines both the Doric order and the Ionic, and that's a geographical distinction more than anything. The Doric order was invented in the Peloponnese and in the Western Greek world. The Ionic style is in the islands of the Aegean and the west coast of Asia Minor, and Athens is physically at the juncture of those two areas of influence. So it's an architect's game, but at the same time, it's a political game. In a way, you could say that Athens is Greece. Above the capitals of the columns is a feature called the architrave, then the carved frieze, painted in colors. Both inside and out, the temples were always painted in bright colors, blue, white, red, and gold. The Greek temples were multicolored. Greek life was multicolored. So this animation of the raw material was part of the Greek spirit in ancient times. Ancient Greece and ancient Athens should always be seen as multicolored. The colors faded over the years, and over the centuries became white with their great age. Finally, above the frieze came the temple's triangular-shaped pediment. In the Acropolis Museum, we can admire the reconstructions of those pediments. The eastern one has as its theme the birth of the armed Athena out of the head of Zeus, the king of the gods, while the western pediment narrates the duel between Athena and Poseidon, both eager to be protector of the city. The very noblest of materials were sent to Athens. The white marble of Mount Pentele, of course, but also other colorful ones intended for the floor inlays, brought from all over Greece and entrusted to the care of renowned craftsmen. The decision to build these temples meant that a huge number of people were put to work. And Plutarch describes literally dozens of professions for bringing the marble, for the animals who would bring the marble and carry it up to the top, for painters, for sculptors, for carpenters. Just dozens of trades were necessary and hundreds of people in order to build these great buildings. Imagine the sheer effort involved for the ancients. 22,000 blocks, a total of 100,000 tons of marble, were used to build the Parthenon. It took just nine years to build the Parthenon architecturally. They continued working on the building for another six years in order to do the sculpture that decorated it. Inside the Parthenon, the Athenians could admire the colossal statue of Athena, 12 meters high, made of gold and ivory. The statue of Athena was created using a process well known to the ancient Greeks. On a wooden frame, a model was made the size of the statue. They added ivory to it to portray the skin. Then it was clothed with gold plate, the weight of which is just incredible. One ton of gold. And on the statue's head, a headdress made of beaten gold. The statue of Athena we call the Chryselephantine statue, because it was made of gold, chrysos in Greek, and ivory, elephas, was not a cult statue. People didn't prostrate themselves in front of it. But it was, in a way, an offering made by the Athenians to Athena. The mirror of water in front of the statue is intriguing. Does it represent an aesthetic desire to dramatize the deity or to maintain a distance from her? In fact, it was there to humidify the air. The ivory elements of the statue had to be preserved, or they might have dried out, or even worse, split. The eyes were made of precious stones. This huge statue, covered in gold plate, was an offering. A gift of great magnificence from the Athenians to their mother goddess, to thank her for her blessings. But all the wealth on display was also a kind of credit fund for the city, which they could draw on if necessary, especially in time of war. Its price is estimated to be double that of the Parthenon in which it stood. At a time when Athens had to be remodeled as the center of the world, Pericles decided to move all the silver and gold from Delos to Athens, and to start in the Parthenon. The Parthenon served as a strong box for the annual tribute paid by the 200 cities of the League of Delos to ensure their defense. The Athenians used this treasure for all their internal dealings. We know that democracy ended up being an expensive business, since the magistrates were all paid, the members of the boule were paid, court juries were paid. That money also came from the tribute paid by allies. It's not a temple. In fact, it's a bank. The Parthenon took 15 years to build, and people at the time found that amazing. To manage to construct something so huge, so beautiful, in such a short time, remains an incredible architectural feat, of which Pericles would say, future ages will wonder at us, as the present age wonders at us now. Phidias' sculptures on the Parthenon are particularly dazzling, although some of them weren't easy to view, such as the frieze at the ceiling. Now, though, we can see them entirely reconstructed at eye level at the Acropolis Museum. This frieze, a 160 meter long carved strip, is one meter high. It shows the festival procession of the Panathenaia, delicately carved in six and a half centimeter deep relief. Panathenaia was the main festival of Athens in honor of the patron deity, Athena. It was celebrated in a particularly large fashion every four years, but every year they had some sort of celebration of her birthday. There in Phidias' representation of the start of this procession, we can make out all the participants, musicians, horsemen, priests, young girls carrying offerings, animals destined for sacrifice. There were also cultural events, poetry, orations, as well as sporting events. On the big days, they would have games and they would have contests, they would have a huge parade and sacrifice a hundred cattle. They would present the statue with a brand new woven dress, so she got a new wardrobe every year. And basically they would just do everything they could to please the goddess. The Panathenaia means everything for Athena. The population of Athens in the 5th century BC is about 400,000 people. No other city of its day can rival it. Society is divided into two groups, the citizens and those who are not, the larger majority. Women and children, to start with, accounted for 100,000 people. All their lives, women are second-class citizens, there to take care of the home and raise the children. Then there are the 40,000 foreigners in the city, referred to as medics. For the most part, they are established craftsmen and traders who have the right to work but not to vote. The city also has more than 120,000 slaves. While most people have a main room and two bedrooms, the houses of the wealthy have many rooms, all centered around the courtyard that is the heart of the house and through which one enters from the street. The courtyard is sometimes paved and usually surrounded by colonnades. The rich houses have dug their personal wells, and the courtyard is a place to socialize and to work. At the front, there are walls of raw brick on a stone base, decorated with a plaster of lime to whiten them, as well as narrow windows and a roof of clay tiles. In a well-to-do house, there's a vestibule and an adjoining reception area for men only, called the andron. This is the room where one displays one's social prestige. There are benches along the walls to lounge on, and it's the room for banquets, then exclusively male. There are also one or several rooms for food storage, a bathroom, a kitchen with a floor-level fireplace, some bedrooms, and a dining room. People live outside a lot, so they're not too bothered about furniture, it's mainly utilitarian. And they're always happy to go out to the religious festivals that bring together all the Athenians. In honor of the god of wine, the Dionysia were held at the theater. The theater that we can see these days dates from Roman times. It replaces the older one that Pericles built in wood, of which nothing remains. But the first theater of the Western world will forever remain engraved in the collective memory. The theater of Dionysus was an immense construction. It was the place where a whole range of religious festivals took place, all dedicated to the god of wine. Greek theater is nothing like the theater we know today. It's not entertainment. In the theater, stories are staged that everyone needs to know in order to construct an idea of themselves, the idea of community, the common spirit. They're stories of what formed the city, and they also address crucial contemporary issues of the city. It's more like a school, or a university, an amphitheater where they give great speeches. But those speeches are about the founding principles of the city and of civic life. No ancient civilization has yet had the idea of seating the public in a circle around the action. This wooden theater on the hillside is square, but it's laid out in tiers for the visual comfort of the spectators. There are no walls. The only scenery is the landscape. This theater was backed by the natural rock of the Acropolis. Its rows of seats were straight. The first row was reserved for the elite, the magistrates, and was made of stone. Behind it rose a wooden scaffold of 45 rows of planks, each about 65 centimeters deep for the rest of the audience. Before them stood a double stage with a circular space called the orchestra, a clay stage that hosted the chorus and the singers, dancers and musicians, and a narrow wooden platform 3.3 meters long. In its early days, it's used to sing the praises of the Greek heroes, but during the 5th century B.C., it is here that the theater and tragedy are born. Up on the Acropolis, the Parthenon dominates the sacred space, but nothing separates that space from the world of men. What it needs is a gateway. This spectacular entrance to the Acropolis is called the Propylaia. Pericles wants it to be spectacular and absolutely unique. And, to inspire respect upon arrival on the Acropolis, it has to be monumental. A physical edifice that marks the entrance to the sanctuary clearly separates the world of men from that of the gods. The real challenge for the architect was to build this huge front door on very steep terrain. The Propylaia was probably more difficult to build than the Parthenon. But in Athens, where they pride themselves on exalting grandeur and beauty, a simple one-room building would be inconceivable. High up there on the rock, you have to make a statement. After all, it's not for any old building, but for a grand gateway. The Propylaia will be the most magnificent of temple gateways. It is designed around a central building, a huge rectangular room lined with columns and flanked by two side wings. The construction of the Propylaia is beautifully handled. The central body of the building with its wings on either side are sumptuous and extraordinary, and take less than five years to build. It takes 3,230 cubic meters of marble, but the magnificent entry that Pericles desired for the Acropolis is achieved. The Athenians loved to surround themselves with art and beauty, so Pericles turns the north wing of the Propylaia into one of the world's first art galleries. The Pinakotheka was a small storage room full of paintings. The paintings are all on wood, which is a perishable material, so obviously no trace of them has remained, but we do know that they were of mythological scenes, scenes from the Trojan War, for example, as well as scenes from Athenian mythology. The smaller south wing leads to the west, to the Temple of Athena Nike, the victorious Athena, built in 420 BC. Once through the Propylaia, the visitor saw before him a huge statue of the armed Athena over nine meters high. To the left, along with the administrative buildings, stood the Arephorion, the home of the Arephoroi. These were four young girls chosen from the nobility to weave each year the tunic of Athena for the Panathenaia festival. To the right, the visitor finds two little sanctuaries no longer there today. The shrine of Artemis Boronia and that of Athena Urgain, before arriving at the magnificent Parthenon. The Greeks created an exceptional civilization of which Athens would remain the finest emblem. The beauty of its achievements would be praised all over the world, marking the whole of Western society with its unique artistic heritage. The legacy of ancient Athens in the fields of the arts, architectural perfection, urban planning, science and thought will forever hold a place of honor in the history of humanity. And the majesty of its monuments still stands, reminding us for time immemorial of the Western world's first megacity.