Acropolis of Athens

The rock that Western architecture keeps returning to. Fortified since the Bronze Age, the Acropolis was rebuilt in marble after the Persians burned it in 480 BC, and the Parthenon that crowns it has been temple, church, mosque and, in 1687, an ammunition store that a Venetian shell blew apart. Its columns swell slightly and lean inward, refinements that trick the eye into seeing perfect straightness. The Erechtheion's porch is carried by six stone women. Athens burned, shrank and grew again below it; the rock stayed.