The ancient ruins of a once prospering society stand immortal on the landscape of the Acropolis overshadowing the city of Athens, enduring time and numerous conquering nations. What people could create monuments to last so long, to amaze the peoples of the far present with their architecture? It could only be the Ancient Greeks, who in the height of their culture built the Parthenon, Erechtheion, and the Theseion. The Acropolis has been in continuous use by the inhabitants of Athens, as a religious center, from the Mycenaean era until the end of the Byzantine period (Hurwit). These buildings in honor of the gods they worshiped were all carefully crafted and constructed in the hopes of beautifying the sacred rock of the Acropolis, also know as the "holy rock". The history of this area and its buildings are ever so deep, spanning many decades and many owners. Empires like the Macedonian, Byzantine, French, Turks, and finally the Greeks (Durant).
The buildings were created from the mind of Pericles and the sculptor Phidias sometime between the 7th and 8th century BC. They envisioned Greece being the center of all beauty and inspiration, with monuments of no comparison. Having these edifices constructed, Pericles, the leader of the democratic faction and a friend of Sophocles, dreamt of Athens as the leader of a panhellenic confederacy, as an ideal democracy, and above all as a city with magnificent edifices, temples, public buildings and theatres, (Durant).
These buildings were used as a place of worship for the Gods, like Athena, until the Mycenaean occupation of the Acropolis around 1600 BC (Bury/Meiggs). At that time, the Acropolis was changed from a religious center to a settlement for defense. The concepts of beauty and pride in architecture were lost in this period; people called the walls of the Acropolis "cyclopean walls," after the Greek Mythological creature called the Cyclops.
