From the naos, the inner sanctum of the Partheon, where Phidias' colossal statue of Athena once stood, this crane now soars, surrounded by a mind-boggling jig-saw puzzle of hundreds of stone blocks and column drums. Much of this mess was created in 1687 by an explosion sparked by a Venetian cannonball that struck the temple while it was being used by the occupying Turks as an ammunition dump. I believe the pyramidal peak beyond it is Mt. Lykabettos, sacred to Apollo.

"Unlocking Mysteries of the Parthenon," an article by Evan Hadingham, senior science editor of PBS's NOVA series, appears in the February 2008 issue of The Smithsonian Magazine. With some interesting photographs, such as the one above, he discusses how efforts to restore the Parthenon are yielding new insights into the amazing feats of its builders.

Some of the bigger blocks weigh more than ten tons, yet the joints between them are barely visible even with a magnifying glass. The levels of precision are often incredible - accurate to within a fraction of a millimerter. And it took them only 7 or 8 years to build it, whereas the modern reconstuction, despite such fancy tools as computerized flute-cutting machines, has taken 32 years just to get to what you see in the photo above.

What's more, despite the efforts of Merlina Mercouri and others to get the British Museum to return the Elgin Marbles - the wonderful sculptured panels that Lord Elgin chiselled off the pediments and friezes and shipped to England 200 years ago - the Brits have steadfastly refused to return them. So it seems the only way the "restoration" will ever be complete is to create a "virtual" Parthenon - a computerized sharing project begun by the 10 museums that own pieces of it. Eventually the sculptures could even be recreated in marble, by computerized stone-cutting robots like the one I depict and describe in my article, "The Sphinx and the Robot." What can never be replaced, alas, are all those beautiful frieze reliefs that were broken and destroyed by the Christians who "converted" the pagan temple to a Christian church in the 5th century AD.

Hopefully the Smithsonian will make Hadingham's article available online soon at its website, Smithsonian.com

Unfortunately, some of the pictures are rather small. And there are none at all of the stupendous ruins of the Temple of Apollo at Didyma, Turkey, 3 of whose 120 columns - twice the height of the Parthenon's - still stand. It was there that Hadingham was shown how its ancient architect scratched on the walls of its inner sanctum the templates for his masons to cut precisely the outward curves across the column flutings that create the famous "entasis" or central swelling of the columns, both there and in the Parthenon. Here some old-fashioned-style drawings might have revealed ancient secrets neither prose nor photographs can.

I believe there are two quite different explanations for that "entasis" or swelling, which is quite visible in the middle, topless, column on the right in the above photo. It used to be said that the columns were made to swell at the center to counter-act the visual illusion of blue sky "carving away" the space between the white columns. But equally plausible, I think, is that such swelling mimics the bulging of our body's muscles as we bend beneath a load, so that we get a visceral sense of "empathy" with the columns as if they were bending beneath the load they carry. Both explanations seem to me plausible, and both attest to the plastic genius and enduring appeal of Greek art.

Perhaps we'll be able to see more revealing details when Hadingham's companion Nova program, "Secrets of the Parthenon," airs on Tuesday, January 29, 2008. Check your local station schedule for the exact time.