Sunday, November 13, 2016

STOA OF ATTALOS

The Stoa of Attalos is the most splendid Hellenistic building in the Agora and the only one to have been restored in contemporary times using almost exclusively modern building material. It houses the Agora Museum. The building was an imposing two-storey Stoa of the Pergamene type, dominating the east side of the Agora, offering a sheltered refuge to visitors and housing a series of shops.



The building material employed in its construction reflects the attention to luxury: the columns of the west side, facing the Agora Square, were made up of white Pentelic marble, as were the columns inside the Stoa and the epistyles. The steps and the stylobate of both storeys, the toichobate, the orthostatai, the taenia coursing the façade’s wall, the door posts and the outside stairway which connected the two storeys were constructed of azure-grey Hymettian marble. The other parts of the walls were made up of hard Piraeus limestone. The foundations were made up of pebbles. The low parapet connecting the intercolumnal spaces in the exterior colonnade of the second storey was colored blue and red.

The foundations has shown that the original plan was for a rather smaller Stoa, with 14 rooms only on each storey. While part of the construction work had already been completed (the rooms of the south side and some parts of the north section), the plan was altered and the building was significantly enlarged. Four rooms were added in the south side; these were smaller than the rest, and the outside stairways were placed, each with a width of 2.21m. Finally, before this enlargement was completed a new one was made; three more rooms were added in the north side, each with a width of 4.11m. Some of these rooms were used as offices, while most of them housed shops.

The Stoa was a favored place for setting up statues and monuments in honor of the city’s benefactors.
A large square was constructed in front of the Stoa in order to create a large level space on which the Stoa could rest. The square was 7.33m wide, and together with the comfortable spaces of the storey, it allowed the viewing of athletic and other events taking place in the area of the Agora by large groups of people. The south section of the building featured a fountain, while pedestals that supported statues, a bema and other monuments have been discovered in front of the Stoa.
The Stoa was severely damaged during the raid of the Heruli. It was completely destroyed in the late 3rd century when the Late Roman defensive wall was constructed, especially as three of its turrets were erected on the spot of the doors of the Stoa's shops.
  
Parts of the building remained visible until the mid-19th century. It was then believed that the ruins belonged to two different buildings, the Stoa and the Gymnasium, but this misapprehension was rectified by the excavations of the Athenian Archaeological Society in 1859. The American School of Classical Studies conducted excavations in the Stoa’s site between 1949 and 1953. In 1953-1956 the Stoa was restored using the drawings of the architect which are considered a faithful adaptation of the ancient design. Paradoxically, the ancient building has not been published yet – some of its unearthed architectural members still remain unidentified. The American School implements a project in the context of which all of the surviving authentic material from the Stoa is documented.









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