Major Engineering Events in History: The Acropolis in Ancient Greece 448 B.C.

About the major engineering events in history, the Ancient Greeks build the Acropolis in 448 B.C.

Great Engineering Feats from Early Times to the Present

448 B.C. (The Acropolis, Athens, Greece). The epitome of European civilization is said to have been reached by the Greeks when they built their Acropolis in Athens. Acropolis--Greek for "upper city"--was the ancient term for any citadel, and the Greeks built many of them. The most famous, however, because of its majestic temples, with their perfectly proportioned shrines lifting great colonnades of gleaming marble, is located in Athens. This citadel, topping a 260'-high hill, had been used for centuries (from at least the Neolithic period some 4,000 years ago), but it was razed by the Persians in 480 B.C. By 448 B.C., Pericles, the military commander and ruler of Athens, commissioned a rebuilding of the city. The 1st new building of splendor was the Parthenon, followed by the Erechtheum, the Propylaea, the Temple of Nike (Victory), and others. Even in ruin, the beauty of the Acropolis of Athens is evident today. The buildings there stand as perhaps the pinnacles of classical symmetry and elegant beauty.