Temple of Apollo

Temple of Apollo can refer to:

Greece

Cyprus

Italy

Sicily

Turkey

Corinth

Corinth

Delphi

Delphi

Rome

Didyma

Didyma (/ˈdɪdᵻmə/; Ancient Greek: Δίδυμα) was an ancient Greek sanctuary on the coast of Ionia. It contained a temple and oracle of Apollo, the Didymaion. In Greek didyma means "twin", but the Greeks who sought a "twin" at Didyma ignored the Carian origin of the name. Next to Delphi, Didyma was the most renowned oracle of the Hellenic world, first mentioned among the Greeks in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo. Its establishment preceded literacy and even the Hellenic colonization of Ionia. Mythic genealogies of the origins of the Branchidae line of priests, designed to capture the origins of Didyma as a Hellenic tradition, date to the Hellenistic period.

Geography

The ruins of Didyma are located at a short distance to the northwest of modern Didim in Aydin Province, Turkey, whose name is derived from Didyma's.

Didyma was the largest and most significant sanctuary on the territory of the great classical city Miletus. To approach it, visitors would follow the Sacred Way to Didyma, about 17 km long. Along the way, were ritual waystations, and statues of members of the Branchidae family, male and female, as well as animal figures. Some of these statues, dating to the 6th century BC, are now in the British Museum, taken by the British archaeologist Charles Newton in the 19th century.

Temple of Apollo (Syracuse)

The Temple of Apollo (Greek: Ἀπολλώνιον Apollonion) is one of the most important ancient Greek monuments on Ortygia, in front of the Piazza Pancali in Syracuse, Sicily, Italy.

History

It is dated to the beginning of the 6th century BC and is therefore the most ancient Doric temple in Sicily and more or less, the first which corresponds to the model of the temple surrounded by a peripteros of stone columns that became standard in the whole Greek world.

The temple underwent several transformations: It was a Byzantine church, from which period the front steps and traces of a central door are preserved, and then an Islamic mosque during the Emirate of Sicily. Later it was restored to its previous purpose, becoming the Norman Church of the Saviour, which was then incorporated into a 16th-century Spanish barracks and into private houses, though some architectural elements remained visible. For instance, in 1778, Dominique Vivant Deron described the temple:

These successive renovations severely damaged the building, which were rediscovered around 1860 inside the barracks and was brought to light in its entirety thanks to the efficient excavations of Paolo Orsi between 1938 and 1942.