Parthenon

No citadel is more famous than the Athenian acropolis. And of the wonderful structures dotting its surface, none stand out more than the Parthenon, seat and center of the sacred Greek heart of old. Built between 447 and 432 B.C., it was the shrine of the virgin ("parthenos") Athena.

While the West owes its values to Judaism and its offspring Christianity (for the most part), almost all of its ideas about art, philosophy, and yes even science come from Greece.  We owe a great debt of gratitude to those Greek thinkers who first sifted reason from myth and superstition. 

The greatest achievements of Greek culture all reveal the same basic attitude toward humanity, whether in art or architecture, or in science and mathematics.  Deeply interested in harmony and balance in all things (epitomized in the human form), this is what the word “classical” calls to mind.

If the ancient Sumerian culture is the "land of firsts", with its many revolutionary innovations and ideas, then Greece is truly the "land of lasts":  they brought to perfection so many of the ancient strands of thought and ways of life. They were the pinnacle of human achievement in classical times.  We have them to thank not only for our logic, vocabulary, and classification system, but also the very manner we approach problems in philosophy, mathematics, medicine, and physics.