Ministry of Culture

Ephorate of Antiquities of Chania

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Two room temple

Archaeological Site of Aptera

The Two Room Temple

dimeris_naos The small, two-room temple of the 5th century BC is one of the city’s earliest important buildings. It is preserved to a low height, and its exterior measures 6.32 m long and 3.96 m deep. Each of the two interior spaces is 2.26 m wide and 3 m deep. It is carefully constructed of dressed ashlars of uniform size, connected lengthwise with iron pelekinoi (double-axe-shaped clamps) and vertically with iron dowels. The entrances were on the east side, where the building was delimited by an enclosure with a small, plain altar in the corner.

Its excavation by the Germans in 1942 yielded scanty pottery and parts of the superstructure, as the building was used as a burial site in Byzantine times. It appears to have been founded on an earlier place of worship, in use from at least the Geometric period onwards, while the surrounding area was used from the 8th century BC to the Byzantine period.

A paved road leading south to the theatre runs east of the temple, between it and a long, sturdy retaining wall running east-west. This is a public building, probably a stoa, perhaps associated with the sanctuary of Artemis, the tutelary deity of the city, which flourished in the Hellenistic period. The fact that this small two-room temple formed part of the larger cult sanctuary is indicated by the positioning of the entrances on the east, in conjunction with the discovery of the stoa on the same side, and the accounts of early modern travellers who place the “Wall of Inscriptions”, now lost, in this area. The wall featured the inscribed resolutions of the boule and the deme of the Apteraians. Such texts were always placed in the main sanctuary of the city, so that they could be seen and read by all.

The two-room sanctuary of Aptera belongs to a category of great importance for the development of ancient Greek temple architecture, with its origins in Archaic or perhaps even earlier times. Its bipartite arrangement probably proves the religious nature of the building, eliminating the possibility that it was used for other purposes (e.g. a treasury). Artemis and Apollo were probably worshipped here jointly during the Classical period. Similar bipartite cult buildings are found throughout Greece. The only Cretan parallel, the temple of Ares and Aphrodite at Lenika (Ellinika) in Lasithi, is later in date and larger in size.

Further investigation of this part of the ancient city, on the north, south and southwest sides of the “two-room temple”, may well reveal new information on its form and its relationship to the buildings around it.
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Monday: 08:30 - 15:30
Tuesday: Closed
Wednesday-Sunday: 08:30 - 15:30

Full price: 4€
Concessions: 2€

Megala Chorafia, Souda, Crete | 730 03 GR
2825033425 & 2821044418

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