Traveling Greece. Athens. Acropolis, Parthenon and Erechtheion. Rhodes island.

Hi everyone, this is Pine.

 

Today, I am going to tell you about Greece. Especially, about Acropolis, Parthenon and Erechtheion.

 

Welcome to Greece

 

First, I am going to tell you about historical manmade structures. Let’s begin.

 

Acropolis

 

The first important place that I picked is Acropolis in Athens.

 

Map of Athens

 

This is a map of Greece and, the red circle is Athens.

 

In the ancient Greece, there were many city-states like Athens and Sparta, and Athens which is the capital and the largest city of Greece now, was one of the city-states.

 

And Acropolis was a central place in each state, so there are many Acropolises in Greece, like Acropolis of Sparta, Acropolis of Mikene.

 

In the center of Athens, there is Acropolis of Athens. Acropolis is named from two words, Acro and polis. Acro means highest and polis means a city, so it means the highest city.

 

Acropolis means the highest city

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It’s shaped like this. 

 

Acropolis. Literally the highest city.

 

So, during war, the acropolis makes easier to defend from enemies, 

 

and usually, In Acropolis, people prayed for their gods, and discussed about political issues. 

 

Map of Acropolis

 

As you can see here, there are many historical buildings in and around Acropolis, and I chose two of them for today. 

 

They are Parthenon and Erechtheion.

 

Parthenon

 

Greek people believed in Greek Gods in Greek-Rome myth. And people lived in Athens worshiped Athena, the goddess of wisdom, craft, and war.

 

So, they built a temple for her and that is Parthenon. Originally Parthenon was a colorful building but now it is not. When you go this place, you can imagine it and feel the huge scale of an ancient building.

 

 

You can find Doric order on Parthenon

 

If you are interested in art, you can find the Doric order here. Such as the style of columns, triangle pediment. 

 

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Erechtheion

 

Next temple is Erechtheion. The name, Erechtheion, derived from Erechthus who is a hero in Greek-Rome myth. And this temple was built for Poseidon and Athena.

 

Caryatid and contrapposto

 

This building has unique columns named Cariatid shaped like women. If you are interested in art, you can see the unique pose of those women. That’s called contrapposto, and it represents typical pose in that period of the ancient Greek art.

 

As I said there are more than 20 historical places in Acropolis so you can enjoy them enough. 

 

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And briefly I’ll show you just one more place in Greece. It’s Rhodes island. 

 

Rhodes

 

Rhodes island is here, the Southeast of Greece and it’s very close to Turkey.

 

Because of the unique location, Rhodes island has belonged to several countries.

 

Firstly, it was a city-state like Athens in ancient Greece, and it was in Roman empire, and in the middle age, some knights owned the island and then, Osman empire had the island and through Italy now it belongs to Greece. Because of these complex history, Rhodes island has unique culture between western and eastern. 

 

Rhodes belongs to...

 

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I’ll show you one of the structures in Rhodes.

 

Palace of Rhodes

 

It is Palace of the Grand Master of the Knights of Rhodes. As I said a group of knights had this island in the middle age, and this castle was for them. You can see the typical castle of middle ages of Europe. 

 

You can walk around the castle.

Castle of art

 

You can walk around, there are many important works of art in this castle and with other cultural places in Rhodes, you can enjoy your time in Rhodes.