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Temple of Athena Nike. View from the Propylaea. Carl Siele, Γεράσιμος Σκιαδαρέσης Archaeological Society at Athens © Η εν Αθήναις Αρχαιολογική Εταιρεία -
Temple of Athena Nike. View from NW. Carl Siele, Γεράσιμος Σκιαδαρέσης Archaeological Society at Athens © Η εν Αθήναις Αρχαιολογική Εταιρεία -
Temple of Athena Nike, plan according to R. Heberdey Archaeological Society at Athens © Η εν Αθήναις Αρχαιολογική Εταιρεία -
The Temple of Athena Nike Aikaterini Laskaridis Foundation © Ίδρυμα Αικατερίνης Λασκαρίδη -
The Temple of Athena Nike James Skene The British Museum © The Trustees of the British Museum -
The "Sandalbinder". Wingless Victory, sculptural fragment from the parapet of the temple of Athena Nike. Dimitrios Constantin The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles © J. Paul Getty Trust. Public Domain CC0 -
Top: frieze of the temple of Athene Nike, depiction of a battle. Bottom: frieze of temple of Theseus, battle involving centaurs. Sir William Gell The British Museum © The Trustees of the British Museum
As visitors ascend the Acropolis, and before entering the Propylaea, the Temple of Athena Nike comes into view on the right, built on the rectangular tower of the southwestern edge of the rock. The elegant, small, Ionic temple was constructed between 426-421 BCE in honour of Athena Nike, the goddess who helped the Athenians achieve victory in wars, and was part of the Periclean building program. According to an inscription, the plans for the construction of the temple were carried out by the architect Kallikrates.
The temple was built on the site of older temples, remnants of which are preserved inside the tower. Of these, a rectangular stone is believed to have been the base of the earlier wooden cult statue of Athena (xoanon). The exact form of the statue dedicated to the goddess by the Athenians in the classical period is unknown, but, according to Heliodorus, a 2nd century BCE traveller, the statue depicted Athena holding a helmet in her left hand and a pomegranate in her right. Pausanias, who visited the Acropolis in the 2nd century CE, believed that the temple was dedicated to the Wingless Victory (Apteros Nike), and that the Athenians sculpted the statue without wings to prevent Nike from leaving their city.
The temple is made from Pentelic marble and consists of a cella and two tetrastyle prostaseis, one on the eastern and one on the western side. The entire outer side was adorned with a frieze: the eastern side depicts the assembly of the Olympian gods around the enthroned Zeus, and the others depict war scenes in which Greeks fight either among themselves or against the Persians. Most scholars believe that these are historical battles and identify the battle depicted on the southern side as the Battle of Marathon against the Persians in 490 BCE. The pediments, carved in Parian marble, survive fragmentarily. It is probable that the eastern one depicted the Gigantomachy, the victorious battle of the Gods against the Giants, and the western one the Amazonomachy, the battle of the Athenians against the Amazons, in which the former prevailed. The exceptionally crafted sculptural decoration of the temple was attributed to the workshop of a distinguished artist, probably Agoracritus, a student and collaborator of Phidias.
In front of the entrance of the temple to the east there was an altar, while for the protection of visitors, as the building was built on top of the tower, a parapet was constructed in the last decade of the 5th century BCE. The “thorakion”, as it is called, was placed on three sides of the tower and consisted of marble slabs one metre high, which increased with the addition of a metal railing. The slabs were sculpted on their outer side so as to be seen by visitors entering the Acropolis and were decorated with representations relating to the celebration of victorious contests of the Athenians. They depicted winged Nikes adorning trophies in the presence of the goddess Athena, leading animals for sacrifice or holding weapons. The most famous relief, the ‘Sandalbinder’, depicts a Nike untying or adjusting her sandal. The figures are ethereal, with richly draped garments that seem to adhere to their bodies, showing off their youthful forms, typical examples of the artistic style of the late 5th century, known as the ‘Rich Style’.
The use of the temple after the end of antiquity is not known. During the Ottoman rule, it was converted into a powder magazine and when the Venetian general Francesco Morosini was about to besiege the Acropolis in 1686, the Ottomans deconstructed the temple to reinforce with its parts the bastion they had built in front of the Propylaea. Later, at the beginning of the 19th century, Thomas Bruce, Lord of Elgin, removed four parts of the frieze to transport them to England along with the rest of the sculptures he had taken from the Acropolis. After the foundation of the Greek state, when excavation works began on the Sacred Rock, the architectural elements of the temple were identified and the restoration of the monument began. A second restoration followed in 1940, while the third was completed in 2010.
