Stoa of Attalos

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The Stoa of Attalos (also spelled Attalus) is recognised as one of the most impressive stoa in the Athenian Agora. It was built by and named after King Attalos II of Pergamon who ruled between 159 BC and 138 BC.

Typical of the Hellenistic age, the stoa was more elaborate and larger than the earlier buildings of ancient Athens. The stoa's dimensions are 115 by 20 metres wide and comprised of Pentelic marble and limestone. It is distinguished from other buildings of that era in that the Doric order was used for the ground floor with an Ionic lower inner colonnade, whereas buildings of that time usually used one order. Each story had two aisles and twenty-one rooms lining the western wall. The rooms of both stories were lighted and vented through doorways and small windows located on the back wall. There were stairways leading up to the second story at each end of the stoa. The interior order of the upper floor was the new Pergamene order, common in that period.

[edit] History

The stoa is identified as a gift to the city of Athens for the education that Pergamon received there. A dedicatory inscription on the architrave is engraved as built by Attalos II, ruler of Pergamon from 159 BC to 138 BC.

The stoa was in frequent use until it was destroyed by the Heruli in 267. The ruins became part of a fortification wall, which made it easily seen in modern times. In the 1940s, the Stoa of Attalos was fully reconstructed and made into a museum, the Ancient Agora Museum in Athens. The building is particularly important in the study of ancient monuments because the reconstruction of 1952 - 1956 replicates the original building.