Athena from outside the Parthenon

On rare occasions, the large doors to the Parthenon are opened. The statue of Athena is about 60 ft. tall. This photo was several years ago and was done in conjunction with a free concert held on the inside that night.

Biggest toes in Nashville

This is the Athena statue inside the Parthenon at Centennial Park. Alan LeQuire was the sculptor who designed Athena with the task to make her look just like the original at the original Parthenon in Greece.

Athena is 42 feet tall. To use easy math, think of a person who is 6 feet tall. Athena is 7 times as big as a person who is six feet tall, and that would make these toes 7 times as big as an average persons toes.

Nashville's 42-foot tall Greek goddess

Athena - a statue years in the making!

Nashville's first Parthenon was built for the Tennessee Centennial Exposition. After the Exposition was finished, the grounds became Centennial Park and the Parthenon remained. That building lasted for a couple of decades. It was so popular that it was decided that a more permanent second Parthenon would be built, and that it should resemble the original as closely as possible.

From these days in the early 1920s, the idea to have a matching as-close-to-the-original-as-possible Athena replica was also begun. From there, it took decades to secure enough private funding. Once enough donations had been gathered, the next step was to determine what the original looked like, since it wasn't around any more. Once that was Settled, sculptor Alan LeQuire was given the task of making the 42-foot replica with a human-sized Nike, a process that by itself took years. Finally a layer of gold was added to all the appropriate places to finalize the statue circa 1990.

Suggested reading: The Parthenon in Nashville