Built as a temple dedicated to the goddess Athena and the centrepiece of an ambitious building programme on the Acropolis of Athens, the Parthenon is one of the most breath-taking sights within the British Museum.
The temple’s great size and lavish use of white marble was intended to show off the city’s power and wealth at the height of the Greek Empire.
Room 18 at the British Museum exhibits sculptures that once decorated the outside of the building. The pediments and metopes (square spaces between triglyphs in a Doric frieze) illustrate episodes from Greek myth, while the frieze represents the people of contemporary Athens in religious procession. Rooms 18a and 18b feature fragments of the Parthenon sculpture and also pieces of architecture.
Video displays using computer graphics explain how the sculptures were placed on the building, and a touch tour for visually impaired visitors includes a model, some original architecture and plaster casts of the frieze. Echo were fortunate enough to produce the captions and information boards throughout these rooms using a multitude of media and finishes.
We could not recommend a visit highly enough to this truly iconic and historically important exhibit.
