Analysis of Important Themes in Greek Architecture
Analysis of Important Themes in Greek Architecture
Greek architecture begins with the simple houses of the Dark Age and culminates in the monumental temples of the Classical period and the elaborately planned cities and sanctuaries of the Hellenistic period. As in any time or place, the raw materials available and the technologies developed to utilize them largely determined the nature of the architecture. The principal materials of Greek architecture were wood, used for supports and roof beams; unbaked brick, used for walls, especially of private houses; limestone and marble, used for columns, walls, and upper portions of temples and other public buildings; terracotta (baked clay), used for roof tiles and architectural ornaments; and metals, especially bronze, used for some decorative details. Greek architects of the Archaic and Classical periods used these materials to develop a limited range of building types, each of which served a fixed purpose—religious, civic, domestic, funerary, or recreational.
The principal forms of religious architecture were open-air altars, temples, and treasuries. The altar, the earliest religious structure, always served as the focus of prayer and sacrifices. The temple, which developed in the 8th century BC, housed the statue of a god or goddess to whom the sanctuary was dedicated. The treasury, a small temple-like building, held offerings to gods and goddesses made by city-states and their citizens at sanctuaries such as Olympia and Delphi. Other important public structures were not religious in function. They included the council house, where a governing council met; the law court; the fountain-house, a building where women filled their vases with water from a community fountain; and the stoa, a roofed colonnade or portico, open on one side and often with rooms set along the rear wall. These structures typically lined the principal public gathering place of the city, the agora, an open assembly area or marketplace
Private houses took many forms. Most early dwellings had just one room, in the shape of a rectangle, an oval, or a rectangle with a curved back wall (an apse). Few Greek houses were ever impressive from the outside, because their walls were of relatively flimsy mud-brick or small stones. But when houses expanded into multiple rooms, the interiors could be airy and pleasant, as they were generally organized around a small courtyard. In the Hellenistic period kings and queens had grandiose palaces built at places such as Vergina in Macedonia and Alexandria in Egypt.
The principal forms of...