Tower of the Winds
The Tower of the Winds (also Horologion Andronikos or Αέρηδες, Tower of the Winds ) is an octagonal tower on the edge of the Roman Agora and the best preserved ancient monument in Athens. It was built in the late Hellenistic period and served as watches pavilion with the function of a weather station. The 13m high tower was designed by the astronomer Andronicus of Kyrrhos in the 1st century BC
Is first mentioned in the tower at Varro (before 37 BC), then by Vitruvius.
Description
For the construction of Pentelic marble. According to the mythological justified wind system of the Greeks, the tower has eight sides. At each of the eight sides of the tower is a sundial, a ninth was probably the southern round annex. It is ever a relief for the wind gods attached. Each figure ( four primary and four secondary winch) shows by its attributes the character of each of the wind, such as Rain, hail, fruit, etc. On the roof there was the figure of a bronze Triton, who could turn a weather vane and with his staff noted the prevailing wind direction. In the tower there was a water meter.
While the tower once stood free, it is now grouped together with the Roman Agora to an archaeological excavation site.
Reception
Vitruvius mentioned in his architectural writing the Tower of the Winds and made its 8 or 16 radials to the starting point of his reflections on urban planning, with regard to this text takes eg the design of Karlsruhe. Surveyed in detail and reconstructed drawings, however, the tower was completed only in 1750 by James Stuart and Nicholas Revett. In her first published volume of Antiquities of Athens in 1762, he was one of the first buildings of the Greek motherland, which were known in Western Europe, and served as a model for a number of buildings of the 18th and 19th centuries. Underneath, in Germany that of Leopold III. Friedrich Franz of Anhalt- Dessau built tower of the eight winds in Dessau- Mildensee and Observatory by Carl Gotthard Langhans (now Observatory Hall in the Botanical Garden of the University of Halle ). The reliefs of the eight winds were repeated on the corner towers of the castle Tegel in Berlin.
To date, the tower in the arts but is also quoted in modern architecture, such as the function of the Tower of the Winds by Toyo Ito but also creatively eg Rob Krier.