Beulé Gate

The Beulé Gate (French pronunciation: [bœ'le]) is a fortified gate, constructed in the Roman period, leading to the Propylaia of the Acropolis of Athens. It was constructed almost entirely from repurposed materials (spolia) taken from the Choragic Monument of Nikias, a monument built in the fourth century BCE and demolished between the second and fourth centuries CE. The dedicatory inscription from Nikias's monument is still visible in the entablature of the Beulé Gate. The gate was integrated into the Post-Herulian Wall, a late Roman fortification built around the Acropolis in the years following the city's sack by the Germanic Heruli people in 267 or early 268 CE. Its construction marked the beginning of a new phase in the Acropolis's use, in which it came to be seen more as a potential defensive position than in the religious terms that had marked its use in the classical period. During the medieval period, the gate was further fortified and closed off, before being built over with a bastion in Ottoman times. The monument was discovered by the French archaeologist Charles Ernest Beulé in 1852, and excavated between 1852 and 1853. Its discovery was greeted enthusiastically in France among the scholarly community and the press, though archaeologists and Greek commentators criticised the aggressive means – particularly the use of explosives – by which Beulé had carried out the excavation. In modern times, the gate has served primarily as an exit for tourists from the Acropolis.

The Beulé Gate is situated at the bottom of a monumental staircase, which led to the Propylaia approximately 37 m (120 ft) to the east. The staircase was constructed in the later first century CE, possibly at the instigation of the emperor Claudius (r.41–54 CE). The gate includes two pylon-like towers, which project around 5 m (16 ft 5 in) from the structure. These towers are joined by walls to the terraces above, including that of the Temple of Athena Nike. The doorway is set into a marble wall and aligned with the main route through the Propylaia. The gate is almost 23 m (80 ft) wide, with a central part around 7 m (20 ft) in both height and width. The area above the central doorway is decorated in the Doric order. It consists of an architrave in Pentelic marble, topped with marble metopes and triglyphs made from a variety of limestone known as poros stone. Above the metopes and triglyphs is a geison with mutules, itself topped with an attic. The doorway itself is 3.87 m (12 ft 8 in) high, 1.89 m (6 ft 2 in) wide at its base, and 1.73 m (5 ft 8 in) wide at the top. Within the doorway is a lintel added in the sixth century CE.

The inscription visible on the entablature was originally the dedicatory inscription of the Choragic Monument of Nikias, a structure built shortly after 320 BCE to commemorate the Athenian choregos Nikias and his victory in the choragic competitions of that year. As arranged on Nikias's monument, it reads as follows:

Nikias's monument was built in the form of a Greek temple in the Doric order, consisting of a square naos with a prostyle, hexastyle pronaos (that is, a front porch with a pediment and six columns). The inscription would originally have been placed across the architrave of Nikias's monument, and represents one of the latest such inscriptions from Hellenistic Athens. Under Demetrios of Phaleron, who governed Athens between 317 and 307 BCE, sumptuary laws to control aristocrats' ostentatious spending caused the construction of choragic monuments to cease. Throughout the remainder of the Hellenistic period, fashions in public art changed to favour statues of rulers and monumental buildings constructed by those rulers themselves.

Archaeological site data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).