Temple of Athena Nike

This guide to the Temple of Athena Nike in Athens follows a small shrine that Ottoman soldiers tore apart stone by stone in 1687, stacking its marble into a gun emplacement as a Venetian fleet under general Francesco Morosini closed in. It reaches back to the temple's founding around 420 BC by Kallikrates, one of the Parthenon's architects, then forward to the 1830s, when archaeologist Ludwig Ross began pulling the wartime bastion apart to rebuild rather than destroy. Stand on the bastion itself as you listen, on the narrow ledge with sheer drops on three sides that greeted every visitor climbing toward the Acropolis gate.