nashville icon

Yep....
right in the middle
of a region
some call the
Bible Belt
is
this enormous
icon...
The Parthenon.

Not sure what
Bible thumpers
think of the
nude statuary
or the
42-foot statue of Athena
the ancient Greek
goddess of war,
civilization,
wisdom,
strength, strategy,
crafts, justice and skill!

All I know is that in my home land
when a Phoenician styled shopping center was erected
with traditional Greek nude statuary
the religious right went nuts.

Those nudes
have since been
draped.

Funny thing....
the only way to know those
classic statues were nude
is if you viewed them with
binoculars!

No matter...
here in Nashville
the Parthenon stands
in the midst of some
of the tallest
church steeples
I've ever seen!

The History:

In the 1840's educator Philip Lindsay thought that Nashville should encourage the ideals of Classical Greek education, such as Philosophy and Latin and be known as the Athens of the West. While that nick -name never took hold, decades later Nashville would be given a similar nick-name; Athens of the South, that would became synonymous with Nashville until the title of Music City arrived, with the dawn of the Grand Ole Opry in the 1930's. If you look in the yellow pages of Nashville, you will still find many companies with the name of Athens within their title.

In 1895 Tennessee searched for a way to commemorate its 100-year anniversary and decided on a centennial exposition to be staged in its capitol of Nashville and then building an exact replica of the Parthenon of ancient Greece and thus the Parthenon, being the pinnacle of the Grand Exposition, was the first building erected.