We had a full day of all things Roman and Greek inspired! After enjoying a delicious breakfast meal at the hotel, we rode the bus to the Valley of the Temples. We met our (famous) tour guide, Professor Michele who teaches at a local university. This valley consisted of four temples on a trail that lead downhill. The reason for building the temples on the highest point possible was so that they could be seen and admired from far away. The first temple, the Temple of Hera/Juno, was the only temple who’s altar was still in present. The altar, facing East, was large enough so that about a hundred sacrifices could be made to the Gods all at once and thousands of people could attend the ritual. The temple itself was impressively preserved. Its inner room, only meant for priests and other other members of a higher title, was still briefly outlined by a short wall.
The second temple we visited was the Temple of Concordia. This temple is the most well preserved because it was taken over by the Christians and used as a church until 1788. Because of the change of practice in religion within this temple, there were some architectural modifications to the inner room. The Christians knocked down a wall near the back of the room to make the gathering space larger. Although we couldn’t see the inner room itself, evidence of this remodeling has been proven by experts.
The third temple was the Temple of Hercules. This temple held a statue of Hercules that was carved by the artist Myron. We know for sure that this was the Temple of Hercules because during its use it was (almost) robbed. However documentation proved that this was a failed attempt and the statue was retired to its original location in the inner room.
The final temple we visited was the Temple of Zeus. The ruins we saw held evidence of a building that had 25 foot statues of men holding up the structure. Given that these statues were 25 feet tall yet were one of the smaller parts of the whole temple itself, historians believe that this temple was almost exactly 20 meters (or about 65 feet tall).
We got to see one of the reconstructed models of one of these statues in the Archeological Museum. A model of the original temple was located right next to the statue as well. An interesting fact about these statues is that it’s believed each statue has a different face - representing diversity within its people and culture.
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