A 3D Model Reveals What the Parthenon and Its Interior Looked Like 2,500 Years Ago

Stand­ing atop the Acrop­o­lis in Athens as it has for near­ly 2,500 years now, the Parthenon remains an impres­sive sight indeed. Not that those two and a half mil­len­nia have been kind to the place: one of the most famous ruins of the ancient world is still, after all, a ruin. But it does fire up vis­i­tors’ imag­i­na­tions, fill­ing their heads with visions of how it must have looked back in the fifth cen­tu­ry BC, when it was a func­tion­ing tem­ple and trea­sury. One enthu­si­ast in par­tic­u­lar, an Oxford archae­ol­o­gy pro­fes­sor named Juan de Lara, has spent four years using 3D mod­el­ing tools to cre­ate a 3D dig­i­tal recon­struc­tion of the Parthenon at the height of its glo­ry, of which you can get glimpses in the video above and at the pro­jec­t’s offi­cial site.

Image by Juan de Lara/The Parthenon 3D

The mate­ri­als pro­mot­ing Parthenon 3D, as it’s called, empha­size one ele­ment above all: its almost 40-foot-tall stat­ue of the god­dess Athena Parthenos, bet­ter known mononymi­cal­ly as Athena. The work of the renowned sculp­tor Phidias, who also han­dled the rest of the struc­ture’s sculp­tur­al dec­o­ra­tion, it end­ed up cost­ing twice as much as the build­ing itself.

Though now long lost, the Athena stat­ue was well doc­u­ment­ed enough for de Lara to mod­el its every detail, down to the folds in her gold­en robes and the cracks in her ivory skin. Dur­ing the Pana­thenaic Fes­ti­val, which came around every four years, sun­light would enter the Parthenon at just the right angle to cause a super­nat­ur­al-look­ing illu­mi­na­tion of the god­dess against the sur­round­ing dark­ness.

Image by Juan de Lara/The Parthenon 3D

Of course, that effect was­n’t acci­den­tal. Even if we con­sid­er the cre­ation of the Parthenon to have been divine­ly inspired, we can best under­stand it as a work of man — and a metic­u­lous­ly thought-out work at that. For ancient Greek vis­i­tors, the illu­mi­na­tion of Athena would have been enhanced by the place­ment of roof aper­tures, reflect­ing water pools, and reflec­tive mate­ri­als, whose orig­i­nal incor­po­ra­tion into the space would come as a sur­prise to most mod­ern vis­i­tors. At present, Parthenon 3D offers the clos­est expe­ri­ence we have to a time machine set to the Parthenon as Phidias and archi­tects Ikti­nos and Cal­l­i­crates orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed. But as de Lara’s research notes, the build­ing also con­tained numer­ous incense burn­ers, so per­fect real­ism won’t be achieved until smells can go through the inter­net. Vis­it the Parthenon 3D site here.

Image by Juan de Lara/The Parthenon 3D

Relat­ed con­tent:

How the Parthenon Mar­bles End­ed Up In The British Muse­um

A Vir­tu­al Tour of Ancient Athens: Fly Over Clas­si­cal Greek Civ­i­liza­tion in All Its Glo­ry

Robots Are Carv­ing Repli­cas of the Parthenon Mar­bles: Could They Help the Real Ancient Sculp­tures Return to Greece?

Explore Ancient Athens 3D, a Dig­i­tal Recon­struc­tion of the Greek City-State at the Height of Its Influ­ence

The City of Nashville Built a Full-Scale Repli­ca of the Parthenon in 1897, and It’s Still Stand­ing Today

Artist is Cre­at­ing a Parthenon Made of 100,000 Banned Books: A Mon­u­ment to Democ­ra­cy & Intel­lec­tu­al Free­dom

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.