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STOA (STOH-uh)

An ancient Greek covered walk or colonnade
Common clues:
Ancient Greek portico; Plato's covered walk; Classical meeting site; Greek colonnade; Greek porch; Aristotle's walkway; Zeno's platform
Crossword puzzle frequency: 3 times a year
Video:
Hephaesteion, Athens


Now I must present myself at the stoa of the Basileus to answer the indictment which Meletos has brought against me ~ Plato quoting Socrates in his dialogue Thaetetus


In ancient Greece stoas, or an extended roofed colonnades, would surround agoras, or marketplaces, of every large city. Stoas were often quite large usually having columns on one side and a wall on the other.




The Stoa of Attalos (also spelled Attalus) is one of the most impressive buildings in the Athenian Agora. It was built by and named after King Attalos II of Pergamon between 159 and 138 BCE. Typical of the Hellenistic Age, the stoa was elaborate and enormous compared to the earlier building in Athens. The stoa is 115 by 20 meters and comprised of Pentelic marble and limestone. Surprisingly, the Doric order was used for the ground floor with Ionic columns on the inside. The interior order of the upper floor was the new Pergamene order common in that period. The stoa was in frequent use until it was destroyed by the Herulians in 267AD. 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.



This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Stoa of Attalos".