The Tower of the Winds in Athens is the oldest meteorological station in the world, and one of the most important ancient monuments in Greece, according to greekreporter.com.
Standing just below the Athens Acropolis in the middle of the ancient Roman Agora, the Tower of the Winds was built in the 1st century BC. It is also called Αέριδες (Aerides) by the Greeks, meaning winds.
It is a beautiful-looking octagonal tower, standing 13.5 meters (44.3 feet) high with a diameter of about 8 meters (26 feet), and is made of the well-known Pentelic marble.
The Tower of the Winds is classified as belonging to the Corinthian style (from the capitals) while its interior is in the Doric style (heavy strict).
To this day, the exact reason for its construction and placement at a particular point in the Roman Agora is not known exactly.
What is known from testimonies of the time is that the Tower of the Winds was designed by astronomer Andronicus of Cyrrhus of ancient Macedonia.
A clock tower and meteorological station
Research indicates that the height of the structure, the sundials, the wind vane, and its placement at the specific point in the Roman Agora make it an early example of a clock tower.
Nevertheless, archaeologists believe it is probably both a clock tower and a kind of meteorological station likely used by merchants to calculate the time and the prevailing winds that affected the trade routes through which their merchandise would arrive.
At the top of the roof of the Tower of the Winds, there was a brass wind vane in the form of a Triton, which rotated to indicate the direction of one of the eight main winds.
Specifically, the frieze depicts the eight wind deities: Boreas (N), Kaikias (NE), Apeliotes (E), Eurus (SE), Notus (S), Lips (SW), Zephyrus (W), and Skiron (NW), and there are eight sundials.
In the interior, time was measured by a water clock, driven by water coming down from the Acropolis through a pipe. Researchers believe that the height of the tower was such that the sundials and the wind vane would be visible on the Agora.
We can conclude that the maker of the monument combined the inventions of previous watchmakers, such as Archimedes, Ctesiphon, and Philo.
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Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons License: CC-BY-SA Copyright: Andreas Trepte
Source: tornosnews.gr/en/