To its citizens, the polis provided a superior way of life to that of barbarians. In an age of almost non-stop warfare, male citizens of a Greek polis between the ages of 18 and 60 were obliged to serve in its army. In return, they had some voice in the governance of their polis. Greeks liked to believe that by making men free and politically responsible, the polis civilized its individual citizens and enabled them to live a worthwhile life. The emergence of about 200 Greek poleis in the 700s B.C. spurred the development of Greek sculpture and architecture and led to speculation about the structure of the cosmos.
The most famous acropolis is the Athenian Acropolis, situated high above the city of Athens.
The first habitation of the Acropolis is occurred in the Neolithic period. The hill has been in use for thousands of year as a habitation or a ceremonial area since. The cult of Athena, the city's patron Goddess, was established as early as the Archaic period (650-480 B.C.). This is known from the inscriptions on the numerous and precious offerings to the sanctuary of Athena (marble korai, bronze and clay statuettes and vases).
On approaching the Acropolis, you must pass through the impressive Propylaia (meaning elaborate entrance in Greek) designed by the architect Mnesicles and constructed in 437-432 BC. It is composed of a central building and two lateral wings. 
The colonnades along the west and east sides each had a row of Doric
columns,while two rows of Ionic columns divided the central corridor into three parts. The walls of the north wing were decorated with painted panels and that is why it was called the "Pinakotheke". The ceiling of the Propylaia had coffers with painted decoration and a perforated sima around the roof.
This monumental entrance to the sacred Acropolis was constructed during the Classical period (450-330 BC) along with the three important temples: the Parthenon, the Erechtheum, and the Temple of Nike. These were erected on the ruins of earlier temples.
The supreme achievement of the Greeks was their claim that everything--from the human body to the entire cosmos--was governed by an order accessible to human reason. That claim has been the basis for western civilization ever since. The Temple of Athena Parthenos, the Parthenon,now a ruin lying atop the Acropolis of Athens, is the testament in stone to that claim.
The Parthenon was built to house a huge gold and ivory (chryselephantine) statue of the goddess Athena, patron of the polis of Athens. It is a temple in the Doric style, and the result of over 4 centuries of refinement in Greek temple architecture. Doric temples were built to rigid standards as to the number of columns and other dimensions, with small refinements for newer temples over time. The first Doric temples were made of wood then later stone as the Greeks grew more affluent. After the Parthenon, temples were never quite built to the same rigid standards.
The Parthenon is the most important and characteristic monument of ancient Greek civilization to this day. The following pictures show the back of the temple (west side) which is the more intact end. And yes, in the right light the Pentalic marble on the Parthenon glows a nice soft yellow in the right light. Pericles initiated the construction of the Parthenon as a center piece to his Acropolis expansion and reconstruction during the Golden Age. The Parthenon was built from 447 to 438 BC, and the sculptural decoration was completed in 432 B.C.
There are 8 Doric columns on the narrow sides (instead of the usual 6), and 17 Doric columns down the long sides making it peripteral. Counting the corner columns both times, each side of the Parthenon had twice-plus-one the number of columns at each end. Even the roof tiles were of marble. The porch of the cella (the walled part of the building with the columns outside it) had six Doric columns on both the east and west ends. The cella itself was high, to hold the huge statue of Athena. The inside walls were surrounded by another two-story Doric colonnade, creating an interior aisle that ran around the statue. Light inside the cella was provided by the high entrance doorway as there were no windows, and by olive oil lamps.
In between the tops of the columns and the roof was a stretch of wall called the entablature. The upper portion of the entablature had metopes (which were carvings of mythological scenes), alternating with triglyphs (originally beam ends on the wooden Doric temples). Both were painted in bright color, though few traces of colour remain today. The two narrow ends of the temple both had a triangular space at each end above the entablature. These triangular pieces of the building are known as the pediments, and are formed by the meeting of the two halves of the sloped roof that ran the long length of the temple. Large, free standing sculptures were placed in the pediments.
One of the masterpieces of Greek architecture, it was constructed between c.421B.C.and 405B.C.to replace an earlier temple to Athena destroyed by the Persians. Its design is sometimes ascribed to the architect Mnesicles.
The Erechtheum contained sanctuaries to Athena Polias, Poseidon, and Erechtheus. The temple displays the finest extant examples of the Greek Ionic order. The requirements of the several shrines and the location upon a sloping site produced an unusual plan. From the body of the building porticoes project on east, north, and south sides.
The eastern portico, hexastyle Ionic, gave access to the shrine of Athena, which was separated by a partition from the western cella.
The northern portico, tetrastyle Ionic, stands at a lower level and gives access to the western cella through a fine doorway.
The southern portico, known as the Porch of the Caryatids (see below) from the six sculptured draped female figures that support its entablature, is the temple's most striking feature; it forms a gallery or tribune.
The west end of the building, with windows and engaged Ionic columns, is a modification of the original, built by the Romans when they restored the building. One of the east columns and one of the caryatids were removed to London by Lord Elgin, replicas being installed in their places.
The little Ionic temple of Athena Nike rises on its high pedestal as an elegant counterpoint to the monumental Propylaea. The temple rests on a four-stepped krepidoma. It is an amphiprostyle temple with four columns in antis in the front and rear. The cella contained the cult statue of Athena. A continuous frieze runs around the architrave, depicting the gods of Olympus and a battle scene depicting Greeks versus Persians. The pediment was adorned with winged victories or Nike(s) created by Callimachus. The temple was probably built in 427 B.C. and commissioned by Pericles shortly before his death. It was completed in 410 B.C. after the war victories of Alcibiades. In 1687, the year that the Parthenon was destroyed, the Temple of Nike was also devasted by the Turks. The Temple of Nike was restored in the 19th century by the Germans Ross and Schaubert
