The sanctuary of Athena Pronaia – Delphi – Greece
The sanctuary of Athena Pronaia is the first that would met the ancient visitor, as the present one, as he comes via land to the Delphi. This fact gave also the name to the temple as pronaia means that her temple is found before the temple of Apollo in the main sanctuary.
And this sanctuary is surrounded by surrounding wall of the classic years in which the sacred buildings are enclosed as well as a part of a smaller archaic wall which is a rare example polygonal wall building. The surrounding wall has here openings for access from all the sides. And here the evidence of worship is related to the last Mycenaean period due to female figurines that were found under the archaic temple and the altars.
Entering the temple we see on the left about two small archaic buildings that consider to be treasures. Right to us exists a total of altars that most belongs in 6th cent B.C. The large one belongs to the temple of Athena while the smallest, according to the inscriptions found, are of Zeus, Athena, the Eileithyias and Ygeias (Health).
The first large building of the sanctuary is an archaic temple of Athena. The one that we see in front of us built at the end of 6th c.B.C. was Dorian peripteral with 6 x 12 columns and had embossed metopes and relief sculptures of which where saved only little pieces. It is interesting that in its foundations found built column parts that belonged to an older temple, of middle 7th cent. which is one of the older monumental temples of ancient Greek architecture. The temple that we see should also have been destroyed in the big earthquake of 373 B.C. when it begun to built the new temple of Athena in the western side of the sanctuary.
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