Although Greece is home to all kinds of architecture, the mental picture we form when we hear the words "Greek architecture" is likely to be that of a temple. No city in classical times was deemed complete without its agora (city-center), defensible acropolis, theater, gymnasium, and stadium. It was the temple of the city's patron god or goddess, however, that was commonly given the dominant position and the greatest honor. The chief temple often stood at the highest point of the acropolis, the nucleus around which the city grew.

In Mycenaean Greece, 1,000 years before the classical period, the chief building of a citadel was the king's palace, as seen at Mycenae, Tiryns, and Pylos. In these palace complexes the central feature is the megaron - a large rectangular room with long walls extended to form the sides of an open porch, the roof of which was supported by columns. A single large doorway gives access to the megaron.

In the center is a large hearth, the focus of the room: around it, in a square plan, are four columns supporting the roof; to the right, a raised platform for the royal throne. There are forecourts to these megara, and pillared gateways. Clustered around the megaron and its forecourt are archive rooms, offices, oil-press rooms, workshops, potteries, shrines, corridors, armories, and storerooms for wine, oil and wheat - the whole forming an irregular complex of buildings that characterizes the style of Minoan palaces at Knossos, Mallia, and Phaistos on Crete.

Doric Style

The early temple builders found that sun-baked brick, especially when strengthened by horizontal and vertical timbers, was a suitable building material, even for large buildings. This construction is seen at Knossos (circa 1900 BC) and at the Temple of Hera at Olympia 1,000 years later. The columns of the early temples were made of wood.

It is likely that the triglyph, the three-part stone slab set above the column and also above the space between columns in the Doric order, originates from a decorative wood slab that protected the beam ends of the ceiling from rain and rot. And the fluting of the Doric column is reminiscent of the grooves that the long strokes of the adze would make as the woodworker cut away the bark of a tree trunk before erecting it as the column.

The Greeks turned Doric order into art and science through a unique understanding of vertical and horizontal space. What they achieved in stone, using strict rules of proportion, is a synthesis of balance, symmetry, and power. Doric style, at its height, also added a series of optical corrections to ensure that the human eye, easily misled by the effect of light and shade in alternation, saw the whole as an apparent pattern of truly horizontal and vertical lines. In fact, with the application of these optical corrections, the entire building is made up of subtly curving or inclined surfaces. These refinements called for mathematical ability of high order and for extreme skill on the part of masons.

The Doric order continued in Hellenistic (350-215 BC) and Roman times, but it is easy to distinguish Greek from Roman Dorica. The later architects dared to use a wider space, enough for three triglyphs between columns; used a base for their columns, whereas a Greek Doric column rests directly on the stylobate; economized by omitting the fluting in the lower part of a column; and reduced the size of the capital.

The Ionic Order

The Ionic order came to mainland Greece almost certainly from Asia Minor and the islands. Ionic columns have bases; the flutes have no sharp edges; columns are taller and thinner; capitals are beautifully decorated with spiral volutes; the architrave has lost its alternating triglyphs and metopes and, in Greece proper, has a frieze of plain or sculptured stone.

If the feeling of the heavier, more austere Doric order can be described as masculine, then the Ionic is certainly feminine (and very lovely), especially suitable for such smaller buildings as the Erectheum and the Temple of Nike on the Acropolis of Athens.

Corinthian

The Corinthian order came later, with the temple at Bassae (circa 430 BC) and the circular building (tholos) at Epidauros (360 BC), where one of the perfectly preserved capitals can be seen in the museum. The capital is decorative and graceful, and one may contrast the simplicity of its sculptured acanthus leaves with the grand complications bestowed later on the Corinthian capital by Hellenistic and Roman architects.

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