The single column
Half a column re-erected, now the emblem of the whole site.
**Because the tyrant who built it was killed, and after him nobody had a reason to complete it.** โ **The original motive**: **Polycrates** ruled Samos in the 6th century BC as one of the strongest powers in the Aegean, and built the temple as a **project of prestige** โ to be **the largest in the Greek world** and proof of the island's wealth and fleet. โ **The interruption**: Polycrates was treacherously killed by the Persians around **522 BC**, **and the project ended with him**. โ **It was never resumed**: temples on this scale consume a whole state's resources for decades, **and Samos afterwards was no longer the same power** โ falling under Persia, then into Athens's orbit. โ **The evidence is in the stone**: many columns were **never fluted** (fluting is done last, after erection), and **half-carved pieces** remain on site. โ **Then something worse happened**: the temple was used as a **quarry** for centuries โ its stone carried off to build churches, castles and houses across the island. โ **Hence the single column**: it is what was not taken.
Sign in to write your review of this place.
No reviews yet โ be the first.
**A single standing column in a wide plain โ all that is left of what was the largest temple in the Greek world** โ on the south coast of Samos, part of a World Heritage site with Pythagoreio. The **Heraion** was the sanctuary of **Hera**, and legend has her **born here** beneath a chaste tree on the riverbank. In the 6th century BC **Polycrates** built an enormous temple: **more than a hundred columns** in double rows, close to 110 metres long โ **the largest Greek temple known in its time**, โ **and never finished**. โ What you see today is **foundations, steps and column bases** โ and **one column** re-erected to half its height, which has become the site's emblem. โ So this is a site that **requires imagination**: almost nothing stands. โ But it is **completely empty**, vast and quiet.
Half a column re-erected, now the emblem of the whole site.
Column bases marking out a footprint hard to credit on the ground.
The trace of the road linking the sanctuary to Pythagoreio.
Ireo, 83103 Samos, Greece