Location: Beneath the Stoa of Attalos TOWSEND, R.F., The Athenian Agora XXVII. The East Side of the Agora. The Remains beneath the Stoa of Attalos (Princeton 1995), fig. 3].
Date of construction: 300 BC
Periods of Use: Hellenistic
INTRODUCTION
The Square Peristyle was built in the late 4th cent. BC, in order to house one of the city’s law courts. In c.150 BC it was demolished to make room for the construction of the Stoa of Attalos.
This structure was meant to replace earlier tribunal buildings and was very simple in terms of its design: a square peristyle, with internal colonnades surrounding a wide, open-air courtyard. The building's side measured 38.75m, while each colonnade had a width of 8.60m. On its west side the there was a monumental entrance, which opened to the Agora square. On the opposite wall, the one facing the less majestic side of the city, there was only a simple door opening. The floor of the square was of compacted ground and was uneven, rising to the south so as to allow the drainage of rainwater through the two ducts under the north colonnade.
On the occasion of the building’s demolition in 150 BC, to make room for the erection of the Stoa of Attalos, and, as great expenditure was required for the total rearrangement of the south square, the building material of the Peristyle was used exclusively in the construction of the South Stoa ΙΙ and, to some extent, in that of the contemporary East Building.
South Stoa ΙΙ incorporates building material from the crepidoma, the stylobate, the columns, the epistyle, the façade of the rear wall, as well as part of the foundations in the interior. The timbers and the tiles of the roof may have also come from the same building. The columns were fluted and were spaced out at 3.01m intervals, preserving the interaxial distances of the peristyle. These columns were of the Doric order, made of superb quality limestone.
The width of the colonnade survives as well, 8.5m from the external wall. Its material was hard grey porous stone, which was widely used in Athens during the 4th cent. BC.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
TOWSEND, R.F., The Athenian Agora XXVII. The East Side of the Agora. The Remains beneath the Stoa of Attalos (Princeton 1995), pp. 50-106.
