Upper Plaka & Choragic Monument of Lysicrates: The Theatrical Lantern

Why is it significant?

Stand in the quiet square of Lysicrates and admire the circular Pentelic marble monument with its six slender Corinthian columns and acanthus leaf crown.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Stand in the quiet square of Lysicrates and admire the circular Pentelic marble monument with its six slender Corinthian columns and acanthus leaf crown. Erected in three hundred and thirty-five BC by the wealthy civic patron Lysicrates, this is the earliest surviving exterior use of the Corinthian architectural order in the world.

Lysicrates sponsored the winning boys' choir at the dramatic festival of Dionysus, and was awarded a magnificent bronze tripod. He commissioned this exquisite stone pavilion, nicknamed the Lantern of Demosthenes, to hold the bronze prize aloft on its floral stone finial.

You are standing on Tripodon Street, recorded in ancient texts as the street of tripods and recognized as the oldest continuously named street in Athens, inhabited for twenty-five centuries. In the early nineteenth century, Lord Byron stayed in the adjacent Capuchin monastery, using the hollow interior of this monument as his private reading and writing study while composing Childe Harold.

Walk east toward the grand Roman archway framing the Temple of Olympian Zeus.