Altar Of The Twelve Gods

The supermarket, churches, and stadiums are have one thing in common, they are all common gathering spaces. Although each space serves a different purpose, people of all backgrounds are free to attend each place as they please. In antiquity, the agora played the same role of a communal gathering location upon to all male citizens. However, as time passed, the functions and meaning of the sense of ‘agora’ changed. By examining the Altar of the Twelve Gods, the Tholos, Stoa of Attalos, and finally the Odeion of Agrippa, the modifications and adaptations can be seen from one time period to the next.
One of the earliest constructed monuments in the Athenian Agora is the Altar of the Twelve Gods. Built in 521 BC, the Altar of the Twelve Gods determined

The preserved foundation made of square blocks supports a low sill of limestone blocks, while the upper surface still bears the marks of the stone fence it once supported. At the corners, there is a deep square cutting for fence posts and dowel holes approximately every 1.2 meters apart for attaching other fence posts (Camp Athenian Agora 40). Although no evidence remains for the objects found within, an inscription from a statue base, along the west side of the sanctuary, tells archaeologists the objects which could be found inside. The sanctuary can be called just that, a sanctuary, because it contained the two primary elements of a sanctuary: the altar and a boundary. Located on the north side of the agora, the Altar of the Twelve Gods was easily accessible, and therefore important to the community members and their ability to freely enter the sanctuary. Additionally, the sanctuary became known as a place of safety and refuge. Phidias even camped out in the sanctuary until all charges against him were dropped. Arguably one of the

Since the Stoa of Attalos presented an ‘alumni’ gift to the center of his education, Attalos embodies the one of the major changes to the agora: nostalgia. By inscribing his name into the building, King Attalos demonstrated self-promotion of power and wealth, as well as the façade of giving back. The peculiar, and most prominent, characteristic is the second-storey. Unlike any other building in the agora, the Stoa of Attalos stood as a major architectural innovation. The second floor duplicated the first, giving the appearance of a one-storey building being placed on top of another, including the three step platform for the columns and twenty-one rooms. In total, the stoa housed forty-two rooms, operating as stores, which were presumed to be rented out by the state with the revenues spent on reparations (Camp 172). Additionally, the spacing for the columns encompassed a wider distance, indicating at the intention to be used as a public space for both gathering and shopping. The inclusion of a public gathering space within a building deviates from the traditional, temporary pop-up stores in the center of the agora, thus expressing another form of revolutionary change to the meaning of agora. Similarly, the stoa simply operated as a gathering