Figure a.

Greek Polis

As you know the Greek culture is characterized by cities that are called Polis. So the history of
architecture is always very much connected to city history as well. We may get the chance, even in
other contexts and countries to analyze cities. So, in this case it’s very important to remember that
in Greek architecture, in the Greek period, Polis is the name of the Greek city. They were sort of
independent urban settlements, even from the administration point of view. So from 1200 to 900
B.C. after a dark age, subsequent to the destruction of the Mycenaean cities from barbarians,
Greece emerged again. So always in history, you have moments of rise of a civilization then
moments of crisis. So after these moments of crisis of the Mycenaean civilization, there are the
other periods that was mentioned in the video. From 900 to 700 Geometric period, 700 to 480
Archiac, 480 to 357 (all B.C.) Classical where there is the death of the Alexander the Great in 323,
and 356 to 330 the Hellenistic period. So obviously there is a strong debate among historians about
the periods. Some agree that these periods are correct and some others say that the dates shift
slightly. But the Hellenistic period is somehow understood as the Orientalizing period. Because
there has been very interesting events in it back to our topic of relationship, during which the
Greeks had very interesting interactions with Persians, Egyptians and the Indus Valley Civilization
that is in India. So the 2 main periods for architecture are the Classical and Hellenistic periods. So
the last 2, we saw a little bit of the first 2, but the most important are the ones that come
afterwards. So as I said the basic unit of politics in Greece was the Polis or the so-called city-states.
The development during the Archiac classical, they were in Greece over 1000 Polis and each city-
state was independent under the republic. So this period had very powerful influence on Roman
Empire and on the foundation of Western civilization. So the Polis which you can see here in a sort
of diagram of a polis was organized usually in three parts and Acropolis that is called the Citadel,
which is higher compared to the rest, and Asty that was part of the city, clearly separated from the
countryside and the agricultural land that is called Chora. So the characteristics of this polis: they
were self-govern.