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The Gateway
The monumental entrance that taught the visitor how to look
Before the temples, the threshold. The architect Mnesicles built a gateway so ambitious that it was never quite finished — a deliberate slowing of the climb, designed to compose the eye before the first columns came into view.
A building that prepares you
The Propylaea is not a wall pierced by a door; it is a covered hall with six Doric columns on each face and a higher central passage for the road. Walking through it, the visitor passes from outside to inside, from city to sanctuary, from ordinary marble to the marble of the gods.
The unfinished corners
Several blocks still bear the lifting bosses used by the masons — small protrusions left in place to be chiselled away last. The work stopped before they could be removed, and so the building wears, forever, the marks of its own making.
The northern wing
On the left as you climb stood the Pinakotheke, the painting room — among the earliest rooms in the West designed specifically for the display of art. Of the paintings, nothing survives; of the room, only its quiet, north-lit walls.