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Modern Description: From the southeast corner of the ring-road of Chora, a road heads south for Aghia Anna and the island's airport. After less than 1km a left branch leads to the Sanctuary of Dionysos at Yria (3.8km). (Open daily except Mon, 8.30–3.) The island of Naxos was sacred to Dionysos, and this spot in the well-watered plain of the Parátrechos river was his main place of cult from at least the 8th century BC. There are many similarities between the final temple built here and the temple of Demeter at Gyroulas—in their design, orientation (to south), and their evolution and growth from previous places of cult: but there are many significant differences, and the sanctuary here was both older and grander. At its zenith in the 6th century BC, it consisted of a walled rectangular precinct (c. 100m x 50m), with a marble temple, an altar, a propylon, several hestiatoria and other ancillary buildings.
site developed through four principal phases: Through the 9th and 8th centuries BC, there would have been a small mud-brick shrine with a flat roof and door on the site, and a central sacrificial pit, built over the site of a Mycenaean open-air shrine of considerable antiquity. Around 730 BC this was refashioned, in larger size (c. 11 x 16.5 m), with stone walls and wooden posts on marble bases in the interior, which supported a wooden ceiling. 50 years later (680 BC) this was modified again and now began to acquire the appearance of a temple with the addition of a four-columned porch on the front. A more uncluttered interior was created with only two rows of wooden columns to support the flat roof which flanked the central focus of the sacrificial pit. This building stood for a century. Around 580 BC the first all-stone temple, whose remains are visible today, was constructed on the same site, but with substantially larger proportions (28.4 x 14m). The walls were of granite but the roof tiles, the south wall and the four-column porch were built in contrasting white marble. The interior columns (c. 8m high) were also in marble; they framed the central view towards a large, chryselephantine statue of Dionysos in the rear chamber.
The Ionic capitals surmounting the columns were fully developed in design and very finely cut—although lacking something of the marvellous plasticity of the early Ionic capitals at the Heraion on Samos. A representative example is exhibited here on the top of a concrete stand. To the west of the temple is a marble well-shaft, and the base of a propylon which would have formed a monumental entrance into the sanctuary from the city. It is possible that the gigantic, Archaic statue of Dionysos, lying unfinished in its quarry at Apollonas at the northern tip of the island, was intended for this sanctuary.
Wikidata ID: Q15884671
Trismegistos Geo: 58668

Info: McGilchrist's Greek Islands

(From McGilchrist’s Greek Islands, © Nigel McGilchrist 2010, excerpted with his gracious permission. Click for the books)

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