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49 free Parthenon trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
The Parthenon has been a temple, a treasury, a church, a mosque and a gunpowder store, and it is still standing after a direct hit from a Venetian mortar. This quiz covers all of it. It opens with the building: begun in 447 BC under Pericles, designed by Ictinus and Callicrates, supervised by Phidias, made of Pentelic marble, with eight columns across the front instead of six and steps that bulge upward so subtly you would never notice. Then it moves to what was inside and on it: the forty talents of gold on the Athena Parthenos, the Delian League money in the back room, the 92 metopes and their four battles, the 160-metre Ionic frieze, and the pediments showing Athena's birth and her quarrel with Poseidon. The second half is the afterlife: the Persian sack of the older Parthenon, the Christian iconoclasts, the mosque, Morosini's bomb of 1687, Lord Elgin's agents, the 1816 vote in Parliament, Byron's fury, the Acropolis Museum of 2009 and the pieces trickling home from the Vatican and Sicily. It ends in Nashville, where a full-scale concrete replica holds a gilded Athena. Easy questions suit anyone who has seen a photo of the Acropolis; the expert tier is for classicists and architecture students. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the Parthenon, its sculptures, its plunderers and its copies, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The Parthenon stands in the capital of which modern country?
Greece
It crowns the Acropolis of Athens alongside the Propylaea, the Erechtheion and the Temple of Athena Nike.
Q 02In which year BC did construction of the Parthenon begin?
447
The Delian League was at the height of its power, and the building was substantially complete by 432 as the Peloponnesian War loomed.
Q 03Which Athenian statesman initiated the building programme that produced the Parthenon?
Pericles
The project lasted the whole second half of the fifth century and also produced the Propylaea, Erechtheion and Temple of Athena Nike.
Q 04The Parthenon's architects were Callicrates and which other man?
Ictinus
In their lost treatise they apparently called the building the Hekatompedos, the hundred-footer.
Q 05Which sculptor supervised the Parthenon's construction and its sculptural decoration?
Phidias
He also made the colossal gold-and-ivory statue of Athena inside, dedicated in 439 or 438 BC.
Q 06The Parthenon is built of marble from which mountain?
Mount Pentelicus
The quarrymen knew how to work around the numerous faults in Pentelic marble, and the architects rejected substandard blocks.
Q 07The Parthenon's gable ends have how many columns, instead of the six usual for Doric temples?
Eight
The octastyle front and unusually wide cella make it unique among mainland Doric temples; there are seventeen columns down each side.
Q 08The Parthenon's platform bulges upward at the centre by roughly how much over its 70-metre length?
10 cm
The 1/700 curve is echoed in the entablature; Francis Penrose's 1851 optical-correction theory remains the leading explanation.
Q 09The slight swelling of a column that tapers toward the top is known by what term?
Entasis
The word comes from a Greek verb meaning to stretch tight; the Parthenon's version is subtler than earlier temples at Paestum.
Q 10The Parthenon's outer columns belong to which classical order?
Doric
The order's fluted columns stand directly on the platform with no base; Vitruvius linked it to masculine proportions.
Q 11The word Parthenon comes from the Greek parthenos, meaning what?
Maiden
The name was later applied to the Virgin Mary when the temple became a church in the sixth century.
Q 12The Athena Parthenos statue was chryselephantine, meaning it was made of what?
Gold and ivory
The plates were fixed over a core probably of cypress wood; the statue vanished at an unknown date in the first millennium.
Q 13According to Thucydides, Pericles told Athenians the Parthenon statue's gold reserve contained how much pure gold?
Forty talents
That is roughly a tonne of gold, and it was all removable.
Q 21In the late sixth century AD the Parthenon was converted into a Christian church dedicated to whom?
The Virgin Mary
The building was turned to face east, an apse was added, and iconoclasts mutilated the metopes on three sides.
Q 22After the Ottoman conquest of Athens in the 1450s the Parthenon became what?
A mosque
One account says Mehmed II ordered the conversion as punishment for an Athenian plot against Ottoman rule.
Q 23Francesco Morosini, whose bombardment blew up the Parthenon, went on to hold which office?
Doge of Venice
He ruled Venice from 1688 to 1694 and also carried off the Piraeus Lion to the Venetian Arsenal.
Q 14The back room of the Parthenon's cella held the treasury of which alliance?
The Delian League
The alliance against Persia gradually became the Athenian Empire, and its funds helped pay for the temple.
Q 15How many carved metopes originally ran around the Parthenon's exterior?
92
Fourteen on each end and thirty-two down each side; having every one carved was unprecedented and never repeated.
Q 16The metopes on the east side, above the main entrance, depict which mythical battle?
Gods against Giants
The other three sides show the Amazonomachy, the fall of Troy and the Centauromachy; the southern ones survive best.
Q 17The Parthenon frieze around the cella was about how long when complete?
160 metres
About 80% survives, with 378 human figures and 245 animals in a procession usually read as the Panathenaic festival.
Q 18The frieze was a novelty for a Doric temple because it was carved in which order?
Ionic
A continuous Ionic band replaced the Doric metopes that would have been expected over the porch.
Q 19Per Pausanias, the Parthenon's west pediment showed Athena's contest with which god?
Poseidon
The two fought to be patron of Athens; the west pediment figures have fully finished backs that no one could ever have seen.
Q 20The Older Parthenon was still under construction when which invaders sacked Athens in 480 BC?
The Persians
The Greeks swore at Plataea not to rebuild sanctuaries the invaders destroyed, which may explain the 33-year wait.
Q 24What happened when Morosini's men tried to remove the west pediment's horses in 1688?
They fell and smashed
The Poseidon had been the largest sculpture on the pediment.
Q 25Agents of which British nobleman removed about half the surviving Parthenon sculptures in 1801-12?
Lord Elgin
He said he had permission from the Ottoman authorities; the legality is still disputed.
Q 26In 1816 a House of Commons committee recommended buying the marbles for how much?
£35,000
Parliament approved the purchase by 82 votes to 30 and passed them to the British Museum on condition they stay together.
Q 27Which poet likened Elgin's removal of the sculptures to vandalism or looting?
Byron
Keats, by contrast, wrote a sonnet on seeing the marbles that praised their grandeur.
Q 28In which year did the Greek government formally ask Britain to return the marbles and list the dispute with UNESCO?
1983
UNESCO called on the UK in 2021 to settle it at intergovernmental level.
Q 29As of 2025, how many frieze blocks did the British Museum hold, against 40 in Athens?
56
The frieze was made of 114 blocks in all; fragments are scattered among six other institutions.
Q 30Four Parthenon fragments have been repatriated to Athens: one from Sicily and three from where?
The Vatican
The Louvre, the National Museum of Denmark and Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum still hold pieces.