Seeing the Parthenon during our trip to Athens, Greece was certainly one of the most interesting sites that we visited. At night, the Parthenon was lit up so that it can be seen from all around the city. The fact that there are eight columns on the façade and seventeen columns on the flanks was done very specifically by the ancient Greeks. They wanted to conform to the 9:4 ratio that was a common design in the days that the Parthenon was built. This ratio governs the relationship between the vertical and horizontal proportions. It is also true of the relationship of the spacing between the columns to the height of the columns. Obviously, geometry was extremely important to the ancient Greeks and it is fascinating to see how they applied this to their lives and to the monuments that they created.
