Choragic Monument of Lysicrates

Take a good look at this elegant round column: it's the trophy from a theatre contest. In classical Athens, wealthy citizens paid for the choruses at the festivals as a public service known as the choregia. When their chorus won, the sponsor received a bronze tripod and displayed it on a pedestal along the Street of Tripods, which ran right past here on its way to the Theatre of Dionysus.

1Lysicrates takes the prize

This is the only one of those pedestals to survive intact. Its inscription spells things out with bureaucratic precision: Lysicrates, son of Lysitheides, of the deme of Kikynna, was choregos; the boys' chorus of the tribe Akamantis won; Theon played the flute; Lysiades trained the chorus; Euainetos was archon. That last detail dates it to 335–334 BC. It is also one of the earliest known uses of the Corinthian capital on the outside of a building.

2A monastery and a poet

For centuries Athenians called it “the Lantern of Demosthenes”, as if the orator had studied inside. In 1658 French Capuchin friars settled here and the monument was absorbed into their monastery, which saved it from plunder. Lord Byron stayed at the monastery during his second visit to Greece. The building burned in 1821, during the War of Independence, and France later paid for the monument's restoration.

3What to look for

• The frieze beneath the roof: Dionysus turning the Tyrrhenian pirates who tried to kidnap him into dolphins.
• The acanthus finial, where the bronze tripod once sat.
• The inscription on the architrave, on the side facing the street.