Erechtheion

This guide to the Erechtheion in Athens looks closely at the six sculpted maidens holding up its porch, carved from Pentelic marble around 420 BCE by sculptors in the circle of Alcamenes as libation bearers for a dead hero-king said to be buried nearby. It explains the sculptural trick that lets them appear to bear the roof's weight, and follows what happened to one of the six in the early 1800s, when the British ambassador Lord Elgin had her cut free and shipped to London. It also covers the pollution damage that later sent her five sisters indoors to the Acropolis Museum.