Location | Agora of Athens, Greece |
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The Stoa of Attalos (also spelled Attalus) was a stoa (covered walkway or portico) in the Agora of Athens, Greece. [1] It was built by and named after King Attalos II of Pergamon, who ruled between 159 BCE and 138 BCE. The building was reconstructed from 1952 to 1956 by the American School of Classical Studies at Athens and currently houses the Museum of the Ancient Agora.
The museum's exhibits are mostly connected with the Athenian democracy. The collection of the museum includes clay, bronze and glass objects, sculptures, coins and inscriptions from the 7th to the 5th century BC, as well as pottery of the Byzantine period and the Turkish conquest.
Typical of the Hellenistic age, the stoa was more elaborate and larger than the earlier buildings of ancient Athens and had two rather than the normal one storeys. The stoa's dimensions are 115 by 20 metres (377 by 66 ft) and it is made of Pentelic marble and limestone. The building skillfully makes use of different architectural orders. The Doric order was used for the exterior colonnade on the ground floor with Ionic for the interior colonnade. This combination had been used in stoas since the Classical period and was by Hellenistic times quite common. On the first floor of the building, the exterior colonnade was Ionic and the interior Pergamene.
Each story had two aisles and twenty-one rooms lining the western wall. The rooms of both stories were lighted and vented through doorways and small windows located on the back wall. There were stairways leading up to the second story at each end of the stoa.
The building is similar in its basic design to the Stoa that Attalos' brother, and predecessor as king, Eumenes II, had erected on the south slope of the Acropolis next to the Theatre of Dionysus. The main difference is that Attalos' stoa had a row of 42 closed rooms at the rear on the ground floor which served as shops. [2] The spacious colonnades were used as a covered promenade.
A dedicatory inscription engraved on the architrave states that it was built by Attalos II, who was ruler of Pergamon. [3] The stoa was a gift to the city of Athens for the education that Attalos received there under the philosopher Carneades. His elder brother and his father had previously made substantial gifts to the city. The building was constructed on the east side of the Agora or market place of Athens and was used from approximately 150 B.C. onwards for a variety of purposes. [2]
The stoa was in frequent use until its woodwork was burned by the Heruli in AD 267. [2] The ruins became part of a fortification wall, which made it easily seen in modern times. Between 1859-62 and in 1898-1902 the ruins of the Stoa were cleared and identified by the Greek Archaeological Society. Their efforts were completed by the American School of Classical Studies during the course of its excavation of the Agora which had commenced in May 1931 under the supervision of T. Leslie Shear. [4]
In 1948, Homer Thompson (who was field director of the Agora excavations from 1946–1967 being undertaken by the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (ASCSA) proposed that the Stoa of Attalos be reconstructed to serve as a museum to house archaeological finds. The Stoa was a suitable size and enough architectural elements remained to assist in producing an accurate reconstruction. In particular enough of the northern end remained to allow engineers to ensure that the reconstructed building would be the same height as the original building. [1] His proposal was accepted and so in June 1953, Ward M. Canaday (president of the Board of Trustees of ASCSA from 1949–1964) authorized the beginning of the work, and in January 1954, the landscape program was formally inaugurated. [5]
Funded by contributions from American donors (including a US$1 million financial contribution from John D. Rockefeller Jr.) the reconstruction of the Stoa was carried out by the ASCSA under the general supervision of the Department for Restoration of Ancient and Historic Monuments of the Ministry of Education, directed by Anastasios Orlandos. [5] The plans were drawn by John Travlos, architect of the Agora excavations, while the reconstruction was supervised by the New York architecture firm of W. Stuart Thompson & Phelps Barnum. Greek civil engineer George Biris served as consulting engineer. [5]
The building was reconstructed on the original foundations but in order to facilitate its new role as a museum some changes were made to the basement storage area, window sizes and door positions while some internal walls were eliminated. [5] The building incorporated as much of the original structure and materials as possible. In particular the north end, the southernmost shops, part of the south wall, and the south end of the outer steps were able to be retained. [1] Quarries in Piraeus and on Mount Pentelicus were opened so as to provide material similar to the original. The walls were built of limestone from Piraeus, while the facade, the columns and interior trim used Pentelic marble from Mt. Pentelicus, and the roof tiles, clay from Attica. [2] As many as 150 workmen were employed, including 50 master masons, 20 carpenters, and five steelworkers. [1]
With the exception of the reconstruction of the Panathenaic Stadium for the 1896 Olympics, the rebuilding of the Stoa of Attalos was the most ambitious reconstruction of a freestanding ancient building carried out in Athens to that time. [5] The reconstruction is particularly important in the study of ancient monuments because it is a faithful replica of the original building, to the degree possible within the limits of archaeological knowledge.[ citation needed ]
The Stoa was formally dedicated on 3 September 1956 at an event attended by members of the royal family, the Archbishop of Athens, various politicians and members of the public. [5]
In 1957, the Greek state assumed responsibility for the administration and security of the museum and the archaeological site. [6]
The ceremony of the signing of the 2003 Treaty of Accession of 10 countries – Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia – to the European Union was conducted in the Stoa of Attalos on 16 April 2003.
The Greek Ministry of Culture undertook further renovations in 2003 to 2004. [7]
The second floor of the building was refurbished and reopened in 2012. [7]
The Acropolis of Athens is an ancient citadel located on a rocky outcrop above the city of Athens, Greece, and contains the remains of several ancient buildings of great architectural and historical significance, the most famous being the Parthenon. The word Acropolis is from the Greek words ἄκρον and πόλις. The term acropolis is generic and there are many other acropoleis in Greece. During ancient times the Acropolis of Athens was also more properly known as Cecropia, after the legendary serpent-man Cecrops, the supposed first Athenian king.
Pergamon or Pergamum, also referred to by its modern Greek form Pergamos (Πέργαμος), was a rich and powerful ancient Greek city in Aeolis. It is located 26 kilometres (16 mi) from the modern coastline of the Aegean Sea on a promontory on the north side of the river Caicus and northwest of the modern city of Bergama, Turkey.
The ancient Agora of Athens is the best-known example of an ancient Greek agora, located to the northwest of the Acropolis and bounded on the south by the hill of the Areopagus and on the west by the hill known as the Agoraios Kolonos, also called Market Hill. The Agora's initial use was for a commercial, assembly, or residential gathering place.
The Stoa Poikile or Painted Portico was a Doric stoa erected around 460 BC on the north side of the Ancient Agora of Athens. It was one of the most famous sites in ancient Athens, owing its fame to the paintings and war-booty displayed within it and to its association with ancient Greek philosophy, especially Stoicism.
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The South Stoa I of Athens was a two-aisled stoa located on the south side of the Agora, in Athens, Greece, between the Aiakeion and the Southeast Fountain House. It probably served as the headquarters and dining rooms for various boards of Athenian officials. It was built at the end of the 5th century BC and remained in use until the mid-second century BC, when it was replaced by South Stoa II.
The Monument of the Eponymous Heroes (Ancient Greek: Μνημείο των Επωνύμων Ηρώων, romanized: Mnēmeio tōn Epōnymōn Hērōōn, located in the Ancient Agora of Athens, Greece adjacent to the Metroon, was a marble podium that bore the bronze statues of the heroes representing the phylai of Athens. The monument was surrounded by a wooden fence on stone posts. All that remains on the modern agora are pieces of a long statue base with the space for ten statues and two tripods at the ends with a partially restored fence. The large size and prominent position make the monument into a landmark for the Agora visitors.
The Sanctuary of Aphrodite Urania was located north-west of the Ancient Agora of Athens and dedicated to the goddess Aphrodite under her epithet Urania. It has been identified with a sanctuary found in this area in the 1980s. This sanctuary initially consisted of a marble altar that was built around 500 BC and was gradually buried as the ground level rose. Another structure, perhaps a fountainhouse, was built to the west ca. 100 BC. In the early 1st century AD, an Ionic tetrastyle prostyle temple closely modelled on the Erechtheion's north porch, that was built to the north of the altar.
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The Stoa of Eumenes was a Hellenistic colonnade built on the South slope of the Acropolis, Athens and which lay between the Theater of Dionysus and the Odeon of Herodes Atticus The gallery was donated to the city of Athens by the king of Pergamon, Eumenes II, around 160 BC. Vitruvius makes reference to the building when speaking about the purpose of stoai erected near theatres that served as a refuge for the spectators in inclement weather conditions or as stores for theatre props.
Mary Alison Frantz was an American archaeological photographer and a Byzantine scholar. She is best known for her work as the official photographer of the excavations of the Agora of Athens, and for her photographs of ancient Greek sculpture, including the Parthenon frieze and works from the Temple of Zeus at Olympia.
John Travlos was a Greek architect, architectural historian, and archaeologist known especially for his work at Athens in the agora of the ancient city. He is the architect that restored the Stoa of Attalos in Athens (1952-1956).
Lucy Talcott was an American archaeologist who worked on the excavations at the Ancient Agora of Athens for over twenty years. An expert on ancient Greek painted pottery, she coauthored the definitive study of Archaic and Classical household pottery.
The New Bouleuterion is an ancient building in the city of Athens in Attica, Greece. It was located on the western side of the Ancient Athenian Agora. It is a theater with 12 rows of seats, with a seating capacity of greater than 500. A bouleuterion, sometimes translated as council house, assembly house, and senate house, was a building in ancient Greece which housed the council of citizens of a democratic city-state.
The Library of Pantainos was a building in ancient Athens. It was located at the southeast end of the Agora of Athens, south of the Stoa of Attalus, on the left side of Panathenaion Street. It was built by the Athenian philosopher Titus Flavius Pantainos between 98 and 102 AD, during the reign of the Roman emperor Trajan. The library building was dedicated to Athena Archegetis, with Trajan himself and the people of Athens, according to an inscription on the lintel of the main entrance, which is preserved embedded in the late Roman wall,.
The Square Peristyle is the modern name for a structure on the east side of the Ancient Agora of Athens, which was among the largest peristyles built in Classical Greece. Construction began around 300 BC, but was abandoned ca. 285-275 BC, leaving the structure unfinished. It probably served as Athens' law courts at the beginning of the Hellenistic period, but fell out of use. In the early second century BC the building was demolished and the material was reused in South Stoa II, on the southern side of the Agora. The Stoa of Attalos was subsequently built over the top of its foundations.
The Southwest Temple is the modern name for a tetrastyle prostyle Doric temple located in the southwest part of the Ancient Agora of Athens. Fragments from the temple found throughout the Agora enable a full, if tentative, reconstruction of the temple's appearance. These fragments originally belonged to several Hellenistic structures and a fifth-century BC stoa at Thorikos in southeastern Attica, but they were spoliated to build the temple in the Agora in the age of Augustus. It is unknown which god or hero the temple was dedicated to. It was spoliated to build the post-Herulian fortification wall after the Herulian sack of Athens in 267 AD.
South Stoa II was a stoa on the south side of the Agora in ancient Athens. It formed the south side of an enclosed complex called the South Square, which was built in the mid-second century BC and may have been intended for use as lawcourts.
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