Tower of The Winds: The World’s First Weather Station

The Tower of the Winds, or the Horologion of Andronikos Kyrrhestes, is an elegant octagonal marble tower in the Roman Agora in Athens. It is considered to be the world’s first meteorological station. More than 2,000 years old, the tower has eight sides corresponding to the eight principle winds, a sundial to tell time, a wind vane to show the direction of wind and an interior water clock that in antiquity could be read even in darkness. Each of the building’s eight sides face a point of the compass and is decorated with a frieze of figures in relief representing the winds that blow from that direction. Tower of the Winds. Photo credit: Viacheslav Lopatin/Shutterstock The ancient Greeks believed that winds blew from twelve different directions, and these directions eventually became a way of figuring out one’s geographic orientation just like the four cardinal directions we use today. It’s not known when or why people started using wind as cardinal directions, but it probably began with the farming population. These ancient observant farmers recognized that the quality of winds differed depending on where the wind was blowing from. Some winds were humid, some were dry, some hot and some cold. Sailors too relied heavily on wind directions and could also recognize a particular wind by its qualities. The ancient Greeks originally maintained distinct and separate systems of points and winds. The four Greek cardinal points ( arctos, anatole, mesembria and dusis ) were based on celestial bodies and used for orientation, while the four Greek winds ( Boreas, Notos, Eurus, Zephyrus ) were confined to meteorology. Eventually, both systems were merged, and wind names gradually came to denote cardinal directions as well.