The Parthenon

De: Mary Beard

Narrado por: Joan Walker

Oscar Wilde compared it to a white goddess, Evelyn Waugh to Stilton cheese. In observers from Lord Byron to Sigmund Freud to Virginia Woolf, it met with astonishment, rapture, poetry, even tears - and, always, recognition. Twenty-five hundred years after it first rose above Athens, the Parthenon remains one of the wonders of the world, its beginnings and strange turns of fortune over millennia a perpetual source of curiosity, controversy, and intrigue.

At once an entrancing cultural history and a congenial guide for tourists, armchair travelers, and amateur archaeologists alike, this audiobook conducts listeners through the storied past and towering presence of the most famous building in the world. The classicist and historian Mary Beard takes us back to the fifth century BC to consider the Parthenon in its original guise - as the flagship temple of imperial Athens, housing an enormous gold and ivory statue of the city's patron goddess attended by an enigmatic assembly of sculptures. Just as fascinating is the monument's far longer life as cathedral church of Our Lady of Athens, as "the finest mosque in the world," and, finally, as an inspirational ruin and icon.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2002, 2010 Mary Beard (P)2019 Tantor

Thoroughly enjoyable

Fascinating narrative well told
Narrator excellent
Enjoyed every word
Great book to gift audible members

Fascinating

Fascinating history of the building, the marbles and current debates. Very accessible without jargon.

Wonderful

I love the history of this place. I visited Athens earlier this year and respect what I saw.

She made a scholarly subject so comprehensible for lay-people.

It's like I never made my Parthenon visit decades ago. So scholarly and yet so articulate for the average reader.