The Parthenon is by far the first destination one heads to when visiting Athens. The Parthenon is the greatest monument of Doric architecture in all Greece. The temple, designed by the architect Iktinos, held the monumental gold and ivory (chryselephantine) statue of Athena designed by the sculptor-architect Pheidias. The name, "Parthenon", refers to the room where the goddess Athena's (Athena Parthenos) statue lay. The Parthenon was rebuilt, only after peace with Persia was reached (prior to that it had been burnt to the ground as with many other monuments of the Acropolis) in 449 BC, from there onward it's reconstruction began with the addition of a Pentelic marble facade (a white marble, that when shined sparkles).
The Parthenon has an exterior colonnade of eight Doric columns at each end, and seventeen Doric columns along each side. Each of these columns bulges slightly in the middle, a design which prevents the massive columns from seeming lifeless and overly regular. In addition, this swelling (known in Greek as "entasis") corrected the optical illusion whereby perfectly straight columns appear to be slightly concave.
Within the temple itself are two chambers, one in which the statue of Athena Parthenos stood, and one which housed the temple treasury. Only priests ever entered the treasury, and the statue itself was viewed only rarely. One of those who saw the statue was Pausanias, who described the Athena as standing "upright in an ankle length tunic with a head of Medusa carved in ivory on her breast. She has a Victory about eight feet high, and a spear in her hand and a shield at her feet, and a snake beside the shield; this snake might be Erichthonios."
The temple itself was adorned with sculptures of a quality never before and never since equaled. The metopes (rectangular panels above the columns) were sculpted with scenes from the Trojan War, and from the Battles of the Athenians and Amazons, the Lapiths and Centaurs, and the Gods and Giants. In addition, a sculptured frieze above the temple walls depicted the great Panathenaic procession. In this annual celebration, Athenian youths and maidens accompanied the new robe for Athena's statue from Eleusis to the Acropolis itself. The young men on horseback, the maidens, the sacrificial oxen and the gods themselves all were depicted, and may be seen today. (Such art is part of museum collections through out the world).
In addition, the Parthenon had monumental sculpture in both pediments. As Pausanias concisely put it, "As you go into the temple called the Parthenon, everything on the pediment has to do with the birth of Athena; the far side shows Poseidon quarrelling with Athena over the country."