Frankish Tower (Acropolis of Athens)
Frankish Tower | |
---|---|
Φραγκικός Πύργος | |
Propylaea and view west over the Athenian plain towards Mount Aigaleo before it demolished in 1875 | |
General information | |
Location | Acropolis of Athens |
Coordinates | 37°58′18″N 23°43′31″E / 37.971577°N 23.725159°E |
Completed | Unclear; probably between 1205 and 1458 |
Demolished | 1875 |
Height | 85 feet (26 m) |
The Frankish Tower (Greek: Φραγκικός Πύργος, romanized: Frankikos Pyrgos) was a medieval tower built on the Acropolis of Athens. The date and circumstances of its construction are unclear, but it was probably built as part of the palace of the Dukes of Athens, who ruled Athens between 1205 and 1458 during what was known as the Frankokratia.
The tower was on the western side of the Acropolis, near the monumental gateway known as the Propylaia. Throughout its history, the tower was used as a watchtower, a beacon, a salt-store and a prison. During the Greek War of Independence, the height of the tower was increased, and it was used to imprison the revolutionary Odysseas Androutsos, who was killed there in 1825.
The tower's presence on the Acropolis was controversial, particularly after 1834, when the government of King Otto of Greece undertook to clear the site of its post-classical remains. While the tower was initially exempted from this project for its perceived aesthetic value, as well as its symbolic role in connecting western Europe and classical Greek culture, it was seen as a foreign imposition upon the Acropolis by many in Greece, particularly archaeological figures such as Kyriakos Pittakis and Lysandros Kaftanzoglou. In 1875, with funding from the German businessman Heinrich Schliemann, the tower was demolished, to widespread criticism outside Greece.
Name
The name Frankish Tower reflects the presumed association between the tower and the medieval Frankish rulers who held power in Athens between 1205 and 1458.[1] It has also been known as the "Venetian Tower", reflecting an erroneous belief that it was constructed during the Venetian occupation of Athens in 1687–1688.[2]
Under Ottoman rule, the tower came to be known as Goulas or Koulas (Γουλάς/Κουλάς), from the Turkish kule, meaning 'tower'.[3] In the seventeenth century, the French doctor and archaeologist Jacob Spon recorded that the tower was popularly known as the "Arsenal of Lycurgus" and falsely believed to date to the fourth century BCE.[4] After 1825, the tower was sometimes known as "Odysseus's Tower", after the Greek revolutionary Odysseas (Odysseus) Androutsos, who was imprisoned there in 1825.[2] It is also occasionally referred to as the "Tuscan Tower".[5]
Location and appearance
The tower was situated on the western corner of the Acropolis of Athens, next to the Propylaia. There was probably no access between the two buildings, as paintings and photographs from the nineteenth century show the tower's entrance above ground, on the second floor of the eastern face, some 6 metres (20 ft) above the architrave of the Propylaea. Literary sources attest that the door was accessible by means of an external wooden staircase.[6][7] Some photographs also show a ground entrance on the western side, which means that the lower portion of the tower was probably separate from the upper floors, and used as a prison or storage room.[8]
The tower was built of stone from the quarries of
History
The date of the tower's construction is unclear, and following its demolition now impossible to reconstruct with any certainty.
The tower may be the inspiration for the "grete tour" in the palace of the Duke of Athens, where Palamon is imprisoned in
Demolition
Background
After the Greek War of Independence, arguments for the tower's demolition came from archaeologists, who believed that the spolia used in the tower's construction might include valuable inscriptions, and from those who saw it as an intrusion on the earlier Greek remains of the Acropolis.[2] In July 1834, the German architect Leo von Klenze arrived in Athens to advise the Greek king Otto on the development of the city. At Klenze's instigation, the Acropolis was demilitarised and designated an archaeological site on 30 August [O.S. 18 August].[20] Klenze, despite his general determination to remove post-classical remains from the Acropolis, favoured the preservation of the medieval structures near the Propylaia for what he considered their "picturesque" appeal, a view shared by the regent Carl Wilhelm von Heideck.[21] The proposal to remove the tower was also opposed in France, where it was seen as a source of pride through its perceived association with Frankish crusaders, and as a symbol of the continuity between ancient Greek and modern French culture.[22] Other critics of the plan to remove the tower, such as the traveller and novelist Elliot Warburton, considered that the tower had aesthetic value and had become part of the well-known skyline of the Acropolis.[23]
The archaeologist Kyriakos Pittakis was an early advocate of demolition, while foreign visitors labelled the tower a "barbarous sentinel" and complained that it interrupted the view of the Parthenon.[2] In the Greek press, the architect and academic Lysandros Kaftanzoglou compared the tower, which he considered of Turkish origin and called "barbarian", with "the droppings of birds of prey".[24] Kaftanzoglou's later work repairing some of the Acropolis's retaining walls, in which he boasted that "no deviation from the ancient line was effected nor use of alien material", has been described as a manifestation of the classicising ideology behind the demolition of the Frankish Tower, and much of the subsequent restoration work on the Acropolis throughout the nineteenth century.[25]
Removal of the tower
In the summer of 1874, the German archaeologist and businessman
Schliemann proposed that the work would be carried out by the Archaeological Society of Athens and directed by the sculptor Napoleone Martinelli, one of its members.[25] Panagiotis Efstratiadis, a prominent member of the society and the head of the Greek Archaeological Service, obtained ministerial approval for the request, and oversaw Schliemann's payment of an initial 4,000 drachmas to Martinelli on 1 July [O.S. 19 June] to cement the deal. However, the operation's beginning was delayed by the intervention of King George I and by the reluctance of Greek government ministers to give final permission. Schliemann presented a further 9,000 drachmas to the Archaeological Society, whose committee subsequently voted in favour of the demolition – despite the objection of the society's president, Filippos Ioannou, that destroying the tower would reinforce foreign complaints that Greece had shown insufficient care for its medieval monuments – on 14 July [O.S. 2 July].[30]
Work began on 14 July [
Reaction
The demolition drew considerable criticism at the time; the French poet Théophile Gautier called the tower an "integral part of the Athenian horizon".[3] The British historian Edward Augustus Freeman wrote an anonymous article on 21 July [O.S. 9 July] 1877, later published under his name in the Trieste-based Greek newspaper Klio, which condemned the demolition as "paltry" and as "wanton destruction".[33] The historian of Frankish Greece, William Miller, later called it "an act of vandalism unworthy of any people imbued with a sense of the continuity of history"[34] and "pedantic barbarism".[28] Kaftantzoglou and his colleague Stefanos Koumanoudis, however, writing on behalf of the Archaeological Society of Athens, defended the demolition as "the restoration of the Greek character of the shining face of the Acropolis, pure and unsullied by anything foreign".[35]
Footnotes
Explanatory notes
- ^ Greece adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1923; 28 February [O.S. 15 February] was followed by 1 March.[17] In this article, this date and all subsequent dates are given in the 'New Style' Gregorian calendar, while dates before it are given in the 'Old Style' Julian calendar.
References
- ^ Lock 1986, p. 101.
- ^ a b c d e St. Clair 2022, p. 493.
- ^ a b c d e Giochalas & Kafetzaki 2013, p. 138.
- ^ St. Clair 2022, p. 190.
- ^ Hurwit 1999, p. 299.
- ^ a b Lock 1986, pp. 111–112.
- ^ Lock 1987, pp. 131–132.
- ^ Lock 1987, p. 132.
- ^ Miller 1908, pp. 401–402.
- ^ a b Baelen 1959, p. 243.
- ^ Lock 1987, p. 131.
- ^ a b Baelen 1959, p. 241.
- ^ Miller 1908, p. 401; Lock 1987, p. 133.
- ^ Lock 1986, p. 112.
- ^ a b Lock 1987, p. 133.
- ^ St. Clair 2022, pp. 282, 492.
- ^ Kiminas 2009, p. 23.
- ^ St. Clair 2022, p. 344.
- ^ a b Moorehead 2016, p. 146.
- ^ Mallouchou-Tufano 2007, p. 38.
- ^ Athanassopoulou 2002, p. 295.
- ^ St. Clair 2022, p. 494.
- ^ St. Clair 2022, p. 495.
- ^ St. Clair 2022, p. 494; Hamilakis 2007, pp. 92–93.
- ^ a b c Mallouchou-Tufano 1994, p. 76.
- ^ a b Baelen 1959, pp. 242–243.
- ^ Vasilikou 2011, p. 62.
- ^ a b Baelen 1959, p. 242.
- ^ St. Clair 2022, p. 496.
- ^ Vasilikou 2011, p. 63.
- ^ Vasilikou 2011, p. 65.
- ^ St. Clair 2022, p. 492.
- ^ Hamilakis 2007, pp. 92–93.
- ^ Miller 1908, p. 401.
- ^ Mallouchou-Tufano 2007, p. 50.
Sources
- Athanassopoulou, Effie F. (2002). "An 'Ancient' Landscape: European Ideals, Archaeology, and Nation Building in Early Modern Greece". Journal of Modern Greek Studies. 20 (2): 273–305. S2CID 143979066.
- Baelen, Jean (1959). "L'Acropole pendant la guerre d'Indépendance [II. Le drame de la Tour Franque]". Bulletin de l'Association Guillaume Budé (in French). 1 (2): 240–298. .
- Giochalas, Thanasis; Kafetzaki, Tonia (2013). Αθήνα. Ιχνηλατώντας την πόλη με οδηγό την ιστορία και τη λογοτεχνία [Athens. Tracing the city through History and Literature] (in Greek). Athens: Estia. ISBN 978-960-05-1559-6.
- Hamilakis, Yannis (2007). The Nation and Its Ruins: Antiquity, Archaeology, and National Imagination in Greece. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-923038-9.
- Hurwit, Jeffrey M. (1999). The Athenian Acropolis: History, Mythology, and Archaeology from the Neolithic Era to the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-42834-7.
- Kiminas, Demetrius (2009). The Ecumenical Patriarchate. San Bernardino: The Borgo Press. ISBN 978-1-4344-5876-6.
- Lock, Peter (1986). "The Frankish Towers of Central Greece". The Annual of the British School at Athens. 81: 101–123. S2CID 129263771.
- Lock, Peter (1987). "The Frankish Tower on the Acropolis, Athens: The Photographs of William J. Stillman". The Annual of the British School at Athens. 82: 131–133. S2CID 163963456.
- Mallouchou-Tufano, Fani (1994). "The History of Interventions on the Acropolis". In Economakis, Richard (ed.). Acropolis Restoration: The CCAM Interventions. Athens: Academy Editions. pp. 69–85. ISBN 978-1-85490-344-0.
- Mallouchou-Tufano, Fani (2007). "The Vicissitudes of the Athenian Acropolis in the Nineteenth Century: From Castle to Monument". In ISBN 978-0-89236-910-2.
- Miller, William (1908). The Latins in the Levant: A History of Frankish Greece (1204–1566). London: John Murray.
- ISBN 978-1-78453-487-5.
- S2CID 248842303. Archived from the original(PDF) on 2022-05-27. Retrieved 2023-01-07.
- Vasilikou, Dora (2011). Το χρονικό της ανασκαφής των Μυκηνών, 1870–1878 [The Chronology of the Excavation of Mycenae, 1870–1878] (PDF). Athens: Archaeological Society of Athens. ISBN 978-960-8145-87-0. Retrieved 2023-06-09.
External links
- Photographs and paintings of the tower, Archaeology of the City of Athens website, National Research Foundation (in Greek)
- Medieval Acropolis and Ottoman Acropolis at Ancient Athens 3D