For all its simplicity, the Lion Gate is of immense historical portent. The powerful sense of structure was an inheritance—ultimately Neolithic—that the Greeks would foster with exceptional refinement. Here, it was combined with the feeling for monumental stone carving in the Lion relief, an element inherited from Egypt but now infused with a new sensitivity to the organic logic and beauty of its subject.
Marvin Trachtenberg and Isabelle Hyman.
Architecture: from Prehistory to Post-Modernism
1250 BCE
The triangular section over the lintel is formed using a system of construction called corbeling. The stones are arranged in a series of layers, or courses, so that each level projects over the one below it. When the stones meet at the top, they are in place by a keystone to create an arch. The empty triangular space is called a relieving triangle because it lightens the weight of stone resting on the lintel. In the case of the Lion Gate, the relieving triangle has been filled with a relief sculpture
argolis, greece
How far back?
2020 | Present
