November 2…. Greece

I went to Greece today. Kinda.

Way back in 1897, to celebrate the centennial of Tennessee becoming a state, they held The Tennessee Centennial Exposition in Nashville.

All kinds of fun exhibits and events, kinda like a world’s fair, it drew crowds from all over the country. Nashville’s population was under 100,000 at the time, and almost two million people came to the exposition during the six months it ran.

Well, up to that time, Nashville was billing itself as “The Athens of the South”, celebrating its culture, enlightenment, and education. At the close of the 1800’s, over 80 institutions of higher learning were pulling people to the city.

So, as part of the exposition, they built a full scale copy of the Parthenon from Athens Greece.

As best they could, of course. The original is a ruin, so they had to make a best guess from Ancient Greek literature and carvings, but it looked pretty authentic to me.

The building in 1897 was just brick and plaster and was just an empty shell, so it deteriorated rather quickly, and in 1920, it was rebuilt using concrete and stone, and this time they finished the interior as well.

The only thing missing (so said that Ancient Greek literature) was the big statue of Athena inside.

Well, in 1989, they finally raised the funds and picked a sculptor to make one. Eight years in the making, and Athena Parthenos was finally unveiled.

Athena was the goddess of strategic warfare, wisdom, virgins and handicrafts. Quite a mix of responsibilities.

The statue stands over 40 feet tall and is covered in gold leaf… over eight pounds of gold!

The outside of the shield shows the battle with Medusa.

And the inside shows a battle between the gods and giants.

Interesting bit, the original design by the sculptor was for a solid carving of blocks of marble, but engineers determined that the foundations of the temple would never support such a weight, so the final sculpture is hollow, and held up by a steel framework. The outside is a multi-piece casting of the actual clay sculpture created by the artist.

The artist started with a 1/10 scale model and worked his way up in stages to the final full size piece. The story tells of how difficult it was to translate from small size to the large size. Hmmm, he should have talked to the Crazy Horse people. They are making a MUCH bigger leap and don’t seem to be having any issues. 😉