Greece: Temple of Apollo Epicurius

For much of the journey today we’d been travelling across flat plains, but now we were going up into the mountains that dominate a lot of the centre of the Peloponnese Peninsula. The scenery was gorgeous was gorgeous with views across the deep valleys. We passed through the occasional tiny village with the narrowest of cobbled streets – some so narrow that they were barely recognisable as streets.

Eventually, we reached the top of the peaks. It was here we landed for our second historic site visit of the day, the Temple of Apollo Epicurius.

The temple sits at 1130m, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, but at one point in time, there was a more extensive sanctuary here with numerous buildings. These have long gone, but the temple building itself has largely survived the impacts of time, weather, and earthquakes – but keeping it this way is a challenge for the conservation teams.

This temple was the first of the great monuments of Greece to be recognised by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 1986.

The temple in its current form was built between 420 and 400 BCE.

Archaeologists are convinced that under its foundations lies an even more ancient temple, probably from the seventh century BCE.

The Temple of Apollo Epicurius is the only ancient temple in Greece to combine three architectural orders: the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian styles. Of the 23 marble slabs of the temple’s frieze, 12 depicted the battle between Greeks and Amazons and the remaining eleven presented the mythical battle between Lapiths and Centaurs. The frieze was unearthed during excavations in 1812, and in 1815 it was sold to the British Museum, where it is exhibited today. The temple was abandoned in the late Roman era and its roof collapsed into the interior causing extensive damage. The outer colonnade (peristyle) remained standing throughout the centuries.

The first serious restoration effort for the building started in 1902-1908. From 1982-1997, an anti-seismic scaffold was placed (1985), lightning protection was installed (1986), and a temporary shelter (tent) was erected (1987) to protect the temple against the region’s extreme weather conditions. This ‘temporary’ shelter is still there today and looks like it will remain for some time!

You don’t see too much as you approach the temple because of the dazzling white shelter, which at first glance looks like a marquee erected for the boat races at Henley. Once we entered, we were blown away by the temple building. It was amazing and by far the best-preserved building of antiquity we’d seen so far in Greece.

The work continues to preserve this magnificent structure and there was a fascinating film being shown on how this painstaking work has been underway for decades.