Sacred Buildings Explained · Fire and marble
The Greek Temple
How an ancient Greek temple worked, from the altar outside and the columns of the three orders to the cella where the cult statue stood, with its history, its use and famous examples.
Traditions: Greek and Roman religion
Part by part
Point at a number in the drawing or at a name in the list to see where each part is.
Altar
A large stone altar stood in the open air in front of the temple, usually to the east, and was the true centre of worship. Here animals were sacrificed and burnt offerings made while worshippers gathered around, with the temple and its statue as a backdrop.
Stylobate and steps
The temple stood on a stepped platform (crepidoma), whose top surface, the stylobate, carried the columns. Its steps were often too high for comfortable climbing, so a ramp or smaller steps led up at the front, and in the finest temples the platform was subtly curved upwards to correct optical effects.
Columns and orders
Rows of columns surrounded the building or stood across its front. Doric columns are sturdy, fluted and without a base, with a plain cushion-like capital; Ionic columns are slimmer, stand on a base and have scroll-shaped capitals; Corinthian capitals are wrapped in carved acanthus leaves.
Frieze
The band above the columns. In the Doric order it alternates grooved blocks (triglyphs) with square panels (metopes) often carved with scenes of myth; in the Ionic order it runs as a continuous sculpted strip, like the procession frieze of the Parthenon.
Pediment
The triangular gable at each end of the roof, often filled with sculpture showing gods and heroes. Figures called acroteria stood on its corners and peak, and the roof was covered with tiles of terracotta or marble.
Pronaos (front porch)
The porch in front of the main room, framed by the projecting side walls and usually two columns. It sheltered the great doors and was sometimes closed by metal grilles, behind which offerings could be displayed.
Cella (naos)
The main room, entered through large doors at the east end, which housed the cult statue. It was often divided by inner rows of columns into a central nave and narrow aisles, and was lit mainly by daylight through the open doors.
Cult statue
The image of the god, set at the far end of the cella facing the doors and the altar. The most famous, by Pheidias, were made of gold and ivory over a wooden core, such as the Athena of the Parthenon and the seated Zeus at Olympia, one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world.
Opisthodomos (back room)
A porch or room at the rear of the temple, matching the front porch but usually not connected to the cella. It could serve as a storeroom or treasury; Athenian inscriptions mention an opisthodomos on the Acropolis where funds were kept, which many scholars identify with the back room of the Parthenon.
In brief
- I.A Greek temple was the house of a god, built to shelter the cult statue of the deity, while the main act of worship, sacrifice, took place at an altar outside in front of it.
- II.Its familiar form, a rectangular room called the cella surrounded by columns and topped by a gabled roof with sculpted pediments, developed from wooden and mud-brick buildings into stone between the eighth and sixth centuries BCE.
- III.Architects worked within recognised orders, above all the sturdy Doric and the slender Ionic, later joined by the Corinthian, and painted their buildings in bright colours that have mostly faded.
- IV.Temples such as the Parthenon, the temples of Paestum and the Roman temples they inspired shaped Western architecture for more than two thousand years.
Visiting respectfully
- In antiquity worshippers purified themselves with water from a basin at the entrance to the sanctuary before approaching the altar.
- Ancient sanctuaries had their own rules, written on stone, about who might enter, what they might wear and what they might bring.
- Today most temples stand on archaeological sites; keep to marked paths and do not climb on the stones or remove fragments.
- Some modern followers of Greek polytheism regard these sites as sacred, so behave quietly as you would at any place of worship.
What the records show
- The Parthenon was built on the Athenian Acropolis between 447 and 432 BCE, with Iktinos and Kallikrates as architects and Pheidias in charge of the sculpture.
- The Temple of Hera at Olympia, one of the earliest Doric temples, originally had wooden columns that were replaced in stone one by one, so that its surviving columns differ in style.
- The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, one of the Seven Wonders, was burnt in 356 BCE by a man named Herostratus who wanted to be remembered, and was later rebuilt.
- The earliest known Corinthian capital stood inside the Temple of Apollo at Bassae in Arcadia, built in the late fifth century BCE.
Common misconceptions
- Greek temples are often imagined as gleaming white marble. Traces of pigment and ancient descriptions show that their sculpture and many architectural details were brightly painted; the white look comes from weathering and from the taste of later centuries.
- People often picture worshippers gathering inside the temple as in a church. Most rites took place at the altar outside, and the interior was visited by priests, attendants and individual worshippers rather than by congregations.
- The Parthenon is usually called the temple of Athena, and it housed her great statue. Many scholars point out, though, that it had no altar of its own and that the oldest cult of Athena on the Acropolis centred on an ancient wooden image kept in the Erechtheion, so the building may have served more as a magnificent votive offering and treasury.
Chapter I
From wooden shrines to marble
In early Greek religion the altar came first. Sacrifices were made in sacred places, often at a spring, a grove or a hilltop, long before anyone built a house for a god. The first temples, from the eighth century BCE onwards, were modest buildings of wood, mud brick and thatch, some of them long and narrow and some ending in a rounded apse. At the sanctuary of Hera on Samos, archaeologists have traced one of the earliest, a long hall about a hundred feet in length, later given a ring of wooden posts, an early step towards the colonnade that would define the temple.
During the seventh and sixth centuries BCE, builders turned to stone and terracotta, and the form settled into the one we recognise: a rectangular cella with a porch, raised on a stepped platform and surrounded on all sides by columns. Two orders took shape. The Doric developed in mainland Greece and the western colonies of southern Italy and Sicily, and the Ionic in the Greek cities of the eastern Aegean and Asia Minor, where vast Ionic temples such as those of Artemis at Ephesus and Hera on Samos were built. The Corinthian capital appeared in the late fifth century and became popular much later, especially with the Romans.
The fifth century BCE, the Classical period, produced the temples most admired today. The Parthenon, built in Athens between 447 and 432 BCE, refined the Doric order with gentle curves and tilts that make its lines appear perfectly straight, and combined it with Ionic features such as a continuous frieze. In the Hellenistic period that followed, temples became larger and more theatrical, and the Romans adapted the Greek temple to their own needs, placing it on a high podium and approaching it from the front only, as at the Maison Carrée in Nîmes.
Chapter II
A house for the god
The temple was not a place of congregational worship but a house for the god’s image and a treasury for the gifts offered to it. The great public rites took place in front of it. On festival days a procession brought sacrificial animals to the altar, where, after prayers and purifications, they were sacrificed; the gods received their portion in the smoke of the fire, and the meat was shared out in a communal feast. The temple, with its doors open and its statue looking out towards the altar, stood behind the scene as the god’s dwelling.
The interior was visited more quietly. Priests and priestesses, often chosen from leading families or by lot for a term, looked after the statue, which might be washed, dressed or adorned on special occasions. Individual worshippers came to pray, to make vows or to leave offerings, and the cella and porches gradually filled with dedications: statues, weapons, vessels, and small figurines. Inventories carved in stone record the valuable objects kept in temples, and some, like the Parthenon, also held public funds.
Temples stood within larger sanctuaries, enclosed areas that might contain several temples, altars, treasuries, statues and, at the great sites such as Olympia and Delphi, stadiums and theatres for the games held in honour of the gods. Sacred laws inscribed on stone regulated who could enter, what they should wear and what was forbidden, and some temples were opened only on certain days or to certain people.
Building a temple was a major public undertaking, paid for by a city, a ruler or a wealthy sanctuary, and it could take decades. Building accounts carved in stone, such as those from Epidauros and Athens, record contracts for quarrying, transport and carving let out to many separate craftsmen. The marble of the Parthenon came from Mount Pentelikon, some sixteen kilometres from Athens. The blocks were laid without mortar, held together by iron clamps and dowels set in lead, and columns were built up from stacked drums fluted only once they were in place.
Chapter III
Styles and famous temples
The Parthenon in Athens remains the most famous Greek temple, though it has been a church, a mosque and a gunpowder store, and was badly damaged in an explosion during a Venetian siege in 1687. Nearby, the Temple of Hephaestus overlooking the Agora is the best-preserved Doric temple in Greece, thanks largely to its later use as a church. At Olympia, the Temple of Zeus once held Pheidias’ gold and ivory statue of the god, now lost.
Some of the most complete Greek temples stand in Italy and Sicily. At Paestum, south of Naples, three Doric temples of the sixth and fifth centuries BCE survive with their columns standing, and at Agrigento in Sicily a line of temples runs along a ridge, the Temple of Concord among the best preserved anywhere. The Temple of Apollo at Bassae, high in the mountains of Arcadia, combined all three orders in one building.
The Ionic temples of Asia Minor were the giants of the Greek world. The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, rebuilt after the fire of 356 BCE, was famed for its forest of tall columns, some carved with figures at their base. At Didyma, near Miletus, the Hellenistic Temple of Apollo was so vast that work on it went on for centuries and was never finished; its inner court open to the sky held a small shrine and a sacred spring connected with the god’s oracle. Little of the Ephesus temple survives, but Didyma’s massive walls and column bases still give a sense of the scale these builders attempted.
The influence of the Greek temple reached far beyond antiquity. Roman temples carried its forms across the Mediterranean, Renaissance architects studied them, and from the eighteenth century Greek Revival architects put temple fronts on banks, museums, parliaments and churches from Edinburgh to Washington. Small groups of modern Greek polytheists today hold rituals at some ancient sites, reviving prayers and offerings in their own way.
Questions people ask
What was inside a Greek temple?
The main room, the cella, held the statue of the god, along with offerings dedicated by worshippers. Some temples also kept treasures and public funds in a back room.
What are the three Greek orders?
Doric, with sturdy columns and plain capitals; Ionic, with slender columns and scroll capitals; and Corinthian, with capitals of carved acanthus leaves. Each also has its own rules for the beams and frieze above.
Why did Greek temples face east?
Most were oriented so that the doors and the statue faced the rising sun and the altar in front. The rule was common but not universal, and local landscape or older shrines could lead to other orientations.
Sources and further reading
- Walter Burkert, Greek Religion (Harvard University Press, 1985)
- J. J. Coulton, Ancient Greek Architects at Work (Cornell University Press, 1977)
- Simon Price, Religions of the Ancient Greeks (Cambridge University Press, 1999)
- Mary Beard, The Parthenon (Profile Books, 2002)