Английская Википедия:Frankish Tower (Acropolis of Athens)
Шаблон:Short description Шаблон:Infobox building The Frankish Tower (Шаблон:Lang-el) 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.Шаблон:Sfn 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.Шаблон:Sfn
Under Ottoman rule, the tower came to be known as Шаблон:Transl or Шаблон:Transl (Шаблон:Lang), from the Turkish Шаблон:Lang, meaning 'tower'.Шаблон:Sfn 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.Шаблон:Sfn After 1825, the tower was sometimes known as "Odysseus's Tower", after the Greek revolutionary Odysseas (Odysseus) Androutsos, who was imprisoned there in 1825.Шаблон:Sfn It is also occasionally referred to as the "Tuscan Tower".Шаблон:Sfn
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 Шаблон:Convert above the architrave of the Propylaea. Literary sources attest that the door was accessible by means of an external wooden staircase.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn 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.Шаблон:Sfn
The tower was built of stone from the quarries of Penteli and Piraeus, making heavy use of material from the ancient buildings of the Acropolis. It was square in shape, Шаблон:Convert long and Шаблон:Convert wide, and its walls had a thickness of Шаблон:Convert at their base. With a height of Шаблон:Convert, its top, accessible through a wooden staircase, held a commanding view over the central plain of Attica and the surrounding mountains. The north side of the tower had a small, square turret that projected from the wall, atop which "beacon-fires could be kindled which would be visible from Acrocorinth" in the Peloponnese.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn During the Ottoman period, this turret hosted two small cannons which could be used to signal an alarm.Шаблон:Sfn Sketches from the late seventeenth century on also show that the tower was once crenellated.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn
History
The date of the tower's construction is unclear, and following its demolition now impossible to reconstruct with any certainty.Шаблон:Sfn Construction is usually ascribed to the Acciaioli family, who ruled the Duchy of Athens between 1388 and its fall to the Ottoman Empire in 1458, since it was they who converted the Propylaea complex into a palace.Шаблон:Sfnm However, according to medievalist Peter Lock, the tower "might equally be ascribed" to the first dynasty of Frankish dukes of Athens, the 13th-century de la Roche family, who also had a residence on the site, of which no details are known.Шаблон:Sfn In the nineteenth century, the classicist John Pentland Mahaffy unsuccessfully tried to argue that the tower dated to the occupation of Athens by the Venetian commander Francesco Morosini between 1687 and 1688; his theory was disproven by the existence of engravings from the occupation, which showed that the tower predated it.Шаблон:Sfn
The tower may be the inspiration for the "grete tour" in the palace of the Duke of Athens, where Palamon is imprisoned in Chaucer's The Knight's Tale.Шаблон:Sfn Under Ottoman rule, the tower was used as a salt store and a prison.Шаблон:Sfn When the Greek War of Independence broke out in 1821, twelve Athenian notables were imprisoned here by the Ottoman authorities as hostages, of whom nine were executed during the 1821–1822 siege of the Acropolis by the Greek rebels and three managed to escape.Шаблон:Sfn The tower was heightened between 1821 and 1826 to provide greater visibility to those using it as an observation post.Шаблон:Sfn In 1825, following his capture by the Greeks after his defection to the Ottomans, the revolutionary Odysseas Androutsos was imprisoned at the tower, tortured and killed.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn His body was found at the foot of the tower on Шаблон:OldStyleDateNY.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Efn Observers reported seeing a rope hanging down from the tower's window, supposedly used by Androutsos during a failed escape attempt, until 1840.Шаблон:Sfn By the 1870s, the tower was home to hundreds of owls.Шаблон:Sfn
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.Шаблон:Sfn 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 Шаблон:OldStyleDateNY.Шаблон:Sfn 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.Шаблон:Sfn 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.Шаблон:Sfn 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.Шаблон:Sfn
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.Шаблон:Sfn 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".Шаблон:Sfnm 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.Шаблон:Sfn
Removal of the tower
In the summer of 1874, the German archaeologist and businessman Heinrich Schliemann visited Athens.Шаблон:Sfn He had been trying for a number of years to secure a permit to excavate in Greece, first unsuccessfully petitioning for the site of Olympia and later for that of Mycenae. On Шаблон:OldStyleDateNY, he proposed to the General Ephorate of Antiquities that he fund the demolition of the Frankish Tower,Шаблон:Sfn which he considered would cost him 12,000 francs: he explained this decision as a "service to science", though it has also been characterised as an attempt to ingratiate himself with the Greek authorities and expedite his requests for an archaeological permit.Шаблон:Sfn He believed that the demolition would be popular, remarking that "everyone in [Athens] was delighted" with the prospect, except for the thousands of owls that lived in the tower.Шаблон:Sfn Schliemann was also granted the right to publish any inscriptions found during the demolition, though none eventually materialised.Шаблон:Sfn
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.Шаблон:Sfn 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 Шаблон:OldStyleDateNY 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 Шаблон:OldStyleDateNY.Шаблон:Sfn
Work began on Шаблон:OldStyleDateNY, amid great publicity organised by Schliemann, but a few days later the demolition was halted by order of King George, prompting Schliemann to write him an indignant letter of protest.Шаблон:Sfn In September, the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Public Education, which directed the Archaeological Service, declared that the demolition should be delayed, on the grounds that the time was not right for it.Шаблон:Sfn The operation finally resumed on Шаблон:OldStyleDate and was completed on Шаблон:OldStyleDateNY. The archaeological historian Fani Mallouchou-Tufano has suggested that the Great Eastern Crisis of 1875, in which nationalist rebellions had arisen in parts of the Balkans still under Ottoman rule, played a role in encouraging Greeks to see the removal of the post-classical structure as a means of reinforcing their "national confidence and certainty."Шаблон:Sfn The demolition eventually cost Schliemann £465 (equivalent to £Шаблон:Inflation in 2019), and was the last removal to date of a building from the Acropolis.Шаблон:Sfn
Reaction
The demolition drew considerable criticism at the time; the French poet Théophile Gautier called the tower an "integral part of the Athenian horizon".Шаблон:Sfn The British historian Edward Augustus Freeman wrote an anonymous article on Шаблон:OldStyleDate, later published under his name in the Trieste-based Greek newspaper Шаблон:Transl, which condemned the demolition as "paltry" and as "wanton destruction".Шаблон:Sfn 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"Шаблон:Sfn and "pedantic barbarism".Шаблон:Sfn 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".Шаблон:Sfn
Footnotes
Explanatory notes
References
Sources
- Шаблон:Cite journal
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- Шаблон:Cite journal
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- Шаблон:Cite book
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External links
- Photographs and paintings of the tower, Archaeology of the City of Athens website, National Research Foundation Шаблон:In lang
- Medieval Acropolis and Ottoman Acropolis at Ancient Athens 3D
- Английская Википедия
- Страницы с неработающими файловыми ссылками
- 1874 disestablishments in Greece
- Acropolis of Athens
- Towers in Greece
- Duchy of Athens
- Demolished buildings and structures in Greece
- Buildings and structures demolished in 1874
- Medieval defences
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- Страницы с телепортом
- Википедия
- Статья из Википедии
- Статья из Английской Википедии
