SWEETNESS AND LIGHT
The greatest pleasure of the Acropolis is the Erechtheum, the small temple perched at its north edge, across from the Parthenon. This structure, the last built on the site, housed an ancient wood statue of Athena and shrines for other deities including
Hephaistos, Poseidon
and Erechthios (from whom the building took its name).
Its architecture reflects these multiple purposes. It looks like a collection of small structures built over time, each with its own ground plane, scale and orientation. It doesn’t possess an authoritative front, back or center, although its famous northwest porch, supported by six female caryatids, gives it an extraordinary imaginative charge.
It is intimate in spirit, and invites a visitor to approach it from every angle, explore each of its corners, climb each of its steps, and stand inside each of its shadows.
The Erechtheum takes strength in contrast to the Parthenon. It is eccentric rather than unified, lyrical rather than bombastic, charming rather than overpowering. The Parthenon, although ravaged, remains iconic; its array of massive swelling columns gives it an unassailable sculptural presence. It is a true monument, a single figure that can taken in all at once. The Erechtheum, instead, is best understood by walking around and through it. Now it is high, now it is dark, now it is mute, and now it is richly expressive. This building is many different things, a fleeting architecture, continually unreeling.