Did you know that there is a 1-to-1 reconstruction of the Parthenon in Nashville, TN? Dr. Elizabeth Thill sure as Hades did not, until she moved to Indianapolis and was told about it by a student. Fast forward 10 years later, and she finally got the opportunity to see the building in person. She recently celebrated a decade-beginning birthday (20s? 40s? 80s? You decide), and her husband, recognizing what a girl really wants as a gift, took Dr. Thill to gawk at some weird neoclassical architecture in a southern city. And it was Amazing.

Why is there a Parthenon in Nashville? Well, I’ll tell you. As part of their state’s own extended birthday celebrations, the citizens of Nashville put on a huge Centennial Fair in 1897. The theme was “the Athens of the South” (no, not that Athens in the South…), and on that theme they constructed a full scale replica of the Athenian Parthenon, the most famous building of the Classical World. As was usual for this sort of thing, they built their Parthenon out of the equivalent of duck tape and cardboard, fully intending to dismantle it after 6 months. Unusually for the time, they included polychrome elements, recognizing that not everything in the ancient world was blindingly white.

Unfortunately, that’s where the multicolored rainbow ends: when it was time to dismantle the Fair buildings, residents clamored to keep the Parthenon standing, as a monument to…let’s just say that despite their polychromic detailing, they really really liked white things. Of course, just liking a building doesn’t make it structurally sound, so in the 1920s it was rebuilt out of concrete. Then in the 1990s they added a full sized cult statue to Athena. And then in the 2000s they proceeded to gild the statue, bringing it closer (presumably) to the ancient chryselephantine statue. Current signs at the Parthenon report that the museum is raising funds to add a replica of the famous Parthenon Frieze.

So should you drive 5 hours south to visit a fossil of what people in the 1920s thought the Athenian Parthenon would look like if you made it out of concrete? What a stupid question, of course you should. As for Dr. Thill, she admired the sense of scale of the exterior, and wondered why they randomly added guttae everywhere. She debated why exactly the cult statue looked so weirdly proportioned, and whether that was due to issues of foreshortening to make it look more impressive from certain viewing positions (a concern shared by ancient sculptors), or due to the modern artist badly miscalculating how tall the statue would be with a helmet on (maybe also a concern of ancient sculptors?). She admired the design of a display of the pedimental sculptures (coming to a Classical Studies class near you!) and absolutely loved an installation by contemporary artist Duncan McDaniel. Then she got bored and (to her husband’s great relief) left to go get something to eat.