For over two thousand years, the Parthenon had survived everything history threw at it. Earthquakes. Fires. Armies from half a dozen empires. It went from Greek temple to Christian church to Ottoman mosque — battered, repurposed, stripped of its original statues and paint, but still standing. Its bones were intact. Then, on the evening of September 26, 1687, one bomb changed all of that forever.
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Lost & Found·7/7·1′
The place
Acropolis of Athens
The Explosion of 1687
When a bomb destroyed what 2,000 years had preserved
September 26, 1687Acropolis of Athens
Moral of the Story
“War destroys what time cannot. The Parthenon stood for over two thousand years, then was blown apart in a single night. What we’ve inherited is precious — and far more fragile than we think.”
Characters
F
Francesco MorosiniC
Count KönigsmarkO
Ottoman defendersT
The 300 victimsSource
Contemporary accounts by Venetian officers, Cristoforo Ivanovich's Historia della Lega Santa, modern archaeological analysis