Head of a Centaur from metope 7 adjusted to the plaster cast of the original metope kept in the British Museum in London. Here a Lapith fends off the Centaur with one hand while with the other prepares to pierce his enemy’s body with a sword. The Centaur who wears a short himation instead of the usual animal skin attire resists the blow standing on his hind legs. The Lapith’s original head is today in the Louvre Museum in Paris.

The main theme of the thirty two metopes on the south side of the Parthenon is the Centauromachy, the mythical battle between the Lapiths and the Centaurs. The Centaurs, half-human creatures with a horse's body from the waist down, while attending the wedding feast of king Peirithoos, close friend of Theseus, became drunk and attempted to carry off the Lapith women.

Each metope on the south side depicts either a fight between a Centaur and a Lapith or the seizing of a Lapith woman by a Centaur. However, the nine central metopes (nrs. 13-20), portray different subjects which still cannot be easily interpreted. Some scholars connect them with Athens' mythical past, but it seems more probable that they are scenes of the marriage from inside the palace of Peirithoos in Thessaly.

The south metopes were not damaged by Christians as severely as those on the other sides of the temple. The bombardment of the monument by Francesco Morosini, in 1687 broke fourteen of them into fragments (nrs. 11, 13-25). In the beginning of the 19th cent. fifteen out of the eighteen best preserved were forcibly detached by Thomas Bruce, lord of Elgin, when Greece was under Ottoman occupation, and ended up in the British Museum in London (nrs. 2-9 and 26-32). Metope 10, which had originally fallen on the ground, after its many adventures, ended up in the Louvre Museum in Paris. Some smaller metope fragments have been dispersed in other museums abroad. The Acropolis Museum houses metopes 1 and 12 as well as fragments of nine further metopes, which were found scattered on the Acropolis and the surrounding area (nrs. 11, 13, 16, 17, 19-22 and 24). Their reconstruction was achieved with the help of the drawings attributed to the painter Jacques Carrey, who visited Athens in 1674, just thirteen years before its bombardment by Morosini.

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