Vallianeio Megaron

This guide to the Vallianeio Megaron in Athens traces how a Greek shipping magnate and his brothers funded a national library for the newly independent country in the 1880s, and how the Danish architect Theophil Hansen designed it as a bare-pedimented temple echoing the Acropolis's own gateway. You'll hear about the years construction dragged on after Hansen died in 1891, and how the Greek state ended up finishing the job itself. It ends inside the skylit reading room, ringed with columns copied from the Erechtheion.