The Parthenon, Nashville

Start with your hand on one of the columns. The surface is cool and slightly rough, a pale concrete with small pebbles set into it. It is not marble. Look up, and the column keeps rising, fluted from base to top, until it meets a heavy band of stone far above your head. Around you, ducks call from the water, joggers pass on the paths, and a full-scale Greek temple stands in the middle of a city park in Tennessee.

This is the Parthenon of Nashville. It is a full-size replica of the great temple on the Acropolis in Athens, the building the ancient Greeks raised for the goddess Athena. Many visitors expect a small model or a decorative copy. What they find is a building at the same scale as the original. And in one important way, it shows more than Athens can. Here the temple stands complete, roofed and whole, with the goddess inside.

So why is it here? The story begins in 1897. Tennessee had joined the United States in 1796, and the state marked its hundredth birthday with a large fair called the Tennessee Centennial Exposition. The fair filled this ground with grand pavilions in many styles. The Parthenon was the centrepiece. It served as the hall of fine arts, and it held paintings and sculpture for the crowds who came to see the fair.

The choice of a Greek temple was not random. By the nineteenth century, Nashville had earned the nickname "the Athens of the South." The city had many schools and colleges, and its leaders liked to see it as a place of learning and culture. Classical columns already stood on banks, churches, and public buildings across town. A copy of the most famous temple of ancient Athens was the boldest possible statement of that idea.

Here is the first surprise. The original exposition buildings were never meant to last. They were made of plaster, wood, and brick, built quickly for a single season. When the fair ended, almost all of them came down. The Parthenon stayed, because the people of Nashville had grown attached to it. But plaster does not survive many wet Tennessee winters. Over the next two decades, the temple slowly cracked and crumbled.

Rather than lose it, the city rebuilt it. In the 1920s, work began on a permanent version in concrete, and the project was finished around the start of the 1930s. That is the building you are standing beside. The aggregate in the concrete was chosen to give the surface colour and texture, so the temple would read as stone from a distance. Step close again, and you can see the small chips and grains mixed into the surface.

Walk slowly along one side and watch the lines of the building. The ancient Greek builders used subtle tricks of the eye. Columns swell very slightly in the middle, and long horizontal lines curve gently instead of running perfectly straight. These refinements make a huge building look balanced and alive rather than stiff. The Nashville builders tried to follow the same principles, based on careful study of the ruins in Athens.

Now look up at the triangular gables at each end, called pediments. In Athens, most of the original sculpture from these spaces is gone or sits in museums. Here, figures fill the pediments, showing scenes from Greek myth. On one end, the story concerns the birth of Athena. On the other, Athena competes with the sea god Poseidon for the city of Athens. Seen from below, the figures give you a sense of how crowded and colourful the ancient temple once looked.

When you go inside, the lower level holds an art museum. Its permanent collection centres on American paintings from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, given to the city by a local collector named James Cowan. Changing exhibitions fill other galleries. It is a quiet, cool space, and it connects the building back to its first role at the 1897 fair, when it was the hall of fine arts.

Then climb to the great hall above. This is the moment most visitors remember. Rising at the far end is Athena herself — a gilded statue that stands about twelve metres tall. She was created by the Nashville sculptor Alan LeQuire and unveiled in 1990. Her skin is painted, her robes and armour shine with gold leaf, and she towers over everyone in the room. The gold leaf was added some years after the unveiling.

Here is the second surprise. The original Athena in Athens, made of gold and ivory by the sculptor Pheidias in the fifth century before the Common Era, has been lost for many centuries. No one alive has seen it. LeQuire based his figure on ancient descriptions and small Roman-era copies. So this room gives you a reconstruction you cannot see anywhere in Greece. In her right hand she holds a small winged figure of Nike, the goddess of victory. Even that small figure is taller than most people.

Before you leave the hall, look for the plaster casts of the Parthenon sculptures. These are copies of the marble reliefs that once decorated the temple in Athens. Many of the originals are now in the British Museum in London. The casts let you study the horses, riders, and gods up close, at eye level, where in Athens they once sat high above the floor. The building has also appeared in films, including Robert Altman's "Nashville" and the first "Percy Jackson" movie.

When you step back outside, take a moment on the steps. The park around you is Centennial Park, named for that same fair of 1897. The small lake nearby, the wide lawns, and the shade trees all sit on the old exposition grounds. Picnics, frisbees, and dog walkers fill the grass on a warm afternoon. Look back at the long row of columns once more. A temple for an ancient goddess, rebuilt by a city that wanted to see itself in her light... and still standing, a little over a century later.