The Mysterious Tower Of The Winds In Athens

Rising from the shadows of time, the magnificent Tower of the Winds is a wonder of antiquity fashioned from the brilliant Pentelic marble. Nestled between the artistic enclave of Plaka and the busy Monastiraki area, this mysterious monument now graces the Roman Agora after two centuries of painstaking repair by the Athens Archaeological Society.

Far from a simple clock tower, the Tower of the Winds is a meeting of architectural grace and scientific inventiveness. It combines the purposes of a sundial, a water clock, and a weather vane so some have even called it a planetarium. Its complex mechanism was meant to monitor the celestial ballet of the Sun, the Moon, and five planets seen with the unaided vision.

This scientific wonder originated in the later half of the 1st century BC; the earliest known written reference comes from 37 BC in the writings of Roman scholar Marcus Terentius Varro. The classic book “Ten Books on Architecture” by renowned Roman writer and military engineer Vitruvius, who served under Julius Caesar and Octavian Augustus, highlights even more the subtleties of the Tower. Designed by eminent ancient Greek astronomer Andronicus of Cyrus, this octagonal edifice is evidence of his mastery of Doric and Corinthian architectural forms.

Rising to a height of 12.3 meters, the tri-level wonder has each of its octagonal faces spanning 3.2 meters. Carefully created in bas-relief, the eight Greek wind deities— Boreas, Caecias, Eurus, Apeliotes, Notus, Lips, Zephyrus, and Scirocco—adorn their apex. Under these celestial leaders are the sundials; inside the tower once housed a water clock, its complex mechanism driven by the lifeblood of the Acropolis.

The Tower of the Winds has seen the tides of time change its goal as history ebbs and flows. Early Christians used it as a baptistery; in the Middle Ages, it was said to have been Socrates’s jail. The Turkish visitor Evliya Çelebi even suggested that King Philip of Macedon’s remains were housed there. Later years saw it used momentarily as a tekke for the Mevlevi Order, a Sufi dervish sect founded by Persian poet and philosopher Rumi. Once Athens was freed from Ottoman control, archaeologists took over responsibility for the tower.

Apart from withstanding time, the Tower of the Winds has been a source of inspiration for next architectural projects. Influence is evident in the Oxford Observatory, the towers in Livorno and Sevastopol, and the mausoleum of Panagis Vagliano, a co-founder of the National Library of Greece, located in London’s West Norwood Cemetery.