The Parthenon has a design that has been mimicked countless times, a symbol of perfect unity, totally symmetrical, democracy itself, but what fascinates me about it is that the entire building has very few right angles, and in reality is just one big optical illusion. When simply looking at it head on, or really from any angle, it looks perfect. The columns are all bulging in the center, lean slightly inward, and the floor is actually so curved that if you lay a book on one end, and look from the floor on the other, you couldn't see the book. The west end of the building is higher than the east, but it was all done so subtly that simply looking at it, it is near impossible for the unaided eye to see that each column, each angle, is individual, that rather than being perfectly symmetrical, the architects made it is so perfectly asymmetrical that is only seems be perfect.
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