Xronia Polla! Canadian Lecture Tour; The Parthenon's Past Revealed

Jonathan, Lana and I send you all our best and warmest wishes for a productive, healthy and felicitous New Year in 2015! As of Monday we have been open for business with our normal hours.

Jonathan and I have finalized the Institute Lecture Program and the Association of Friends' Program for the winter and early spring. At our first event on February 4^th we will cut the Institute’s vasilopita. We will send out the programs shortly.

This weekend Tessa Little will arrive from Canada. She will be our graduate intern from Brock University for three months.

Canadian Lecture Tour

This coming Wednesday, the 14^th, my wife, Dr. Metaxia Tsipopoulou and I will depart for Canada for a lecture tour. I will give lectures about the Institute and its fieldwork in Winnipeg on Sunday the 18th, in Edmonton on Thursday the 22^nd (with the AIA), in Calgary on Friday the 23rd, in Vancouver on Monday the 26^th to PHAROS, and in Victoria on Thursday the 29^th to CAVI.  Metaxia will give a lecture on her excavations and research at the Minoan palace, settlement and cemetery at Petras (Siteia, Crete) in Winnipeg on the 19^th and in Vancouver on the 27^th to the AIA. The time and location of these lectures have been/will be advertised at each venue. We look forward to large and enthusiastic audiences. When I get back my next blog will provide an overview of this full winter adventure.

This lecture tour was made possible by the generosity of Ambassador Peck, the Institutional members of the Institute in each city and Cinespace Film Studios.  Sas efkharistoume para para poly!!!

We hope to see old friends and colleagues and make new friends along the way. The current deep freeze in western Canada will test our stamina for the cold that is for sure!

The Parthenon’s Past Revealed

The Parthenon on the Akropolis is the icon of Athens and visible from many places in the city. Many visitors and residents alike frequently have the idea that this monument, built in the third quarter of the 5^th century BC, was a static structure until it was severely damaged when the Ottoman power magazine inside was blown up by a mortar fired by the besieging forces of the Venetian Captain General Morosini in 1687. This is far from the complex and long history of this Classical temple.

On Monday January 12^th at 18:30 Lena Lambrinou from the conservation services of the monuments of the Akropolis will give a lecture in Greek entitled «Κτηριακές πληροφορίες για τον Παρθενώνα μέσω αρχειακών τεκμηρίων – κείμενα και απεικονίσεις». Lambrinou’s lecture will present information from historical and archival sources which correct as well as enhance our knowledge of both the structure’s ancient form as well as the many changes to it over the subsequent centuries. What other Greek temple was also a church, a mosque and a powder magazine?

The lecture is sponsored by the Συλλογος Φιλων Του Ιστορικου Αρχειου Της Αρχαιολογικης Υπηρεσιας and will be held at the Historical Archive at Psaromylingou 22 on the cusp between the Kerameikos and the Psyrri Districts. The Theseio Train Station is the nearest Metro stop. The Syllogos Filon will cut their pita after the lecture.

Kali Xronia se olous!
David Rupp
Director