Palestre

The palestre was, in the ancient Greece, the place where one practiced the Lutte and other physical exercises.

With the difference of the Gymnasium, the palestre did not have track of race. These buildings were built at the expenses of the State or a évergète (generous and rich giver), as that was done much in Antiquity. The palestres were placed under the direction of a pédotribe. More than one simple sporting infrastructure, the palestre is a high place of Greek education and it is about a central building in the Greek culture.

It in this respect will be exported in all the areas of influence of the Greek culture, one will thus commonly find it in Asia Mineure but also with the the Middle East, i.e. in all the places where the Greeks exerted their cultural hegemony. It belongs to the Greek design of the achieved man, design recovered later by the Romans and that Juvénal synthesized by its “ lie sanatorium in corpore sano ” ( a healthy mind in a healthy body ).

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