Photo of the Day

The Parthenon, in colour, in the 1890s

Saturday 26 September 2026

A Venetian mortar shell blew up the Parthenon on 26 September 1687.

Colour print of the ruined Parthenon: rust-coloured columns and a broken roofline under a pale blue sky, fallen marble blocks in front — Photochrom print · c. 1890

The Parthenon in Athens in a colour photochrom print from around 1890. For its first two thousand years the temple was largely intact; on 26 September 1687 a Venetian shell hit the gunpowder the Ottomans had stored inside, and the explosion left it the ruin we know.

Fun facts

It was built between 447 and 432 BC as a temple to Athena, and later served as a church and then a mosque. source ↗
The columns lean slightly inward and bulge in the middle; the corrections were designed so the building would look perfectly straight. source ↗
About half its surviving sculptures are in the British Museum, taken by Lord Elgin in the early 1800s. source ↗
The marble came from Mount Pentelicus, roughly 10 miles (16 km) north-east of the city, and turns a warm gold as it weathers. source ↗

Image: Photoglob Co. · Library of Congress
Licence: Public domain
Source: Wikimedia Commons Library of Congress