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Modern Description: The sanctuary of Poseidon, where the panhellenic Isthmian games were held, is located in the modern village of Kyra-Vrysi. The Doric temple of Poseidon was built in the 7th century BC and renovated several times subsequently until the 2nd century AD. The sanctuary was destroyed by the Romans in 146 BC and re-established after 44 BC. To the SE are traces of the monopteral naiskos of the hero Palaimon-Melikertes, with whose cult the founding of the Isthmian games is associated. It was built on the starting-line of the earlier stadium, which preserves traces of the hysplex (ὕóðëçî) system for the simultaneous start of the athletes in the running race. The stadium of Hellenistic and Roman times was located further S of the sanctuary. To the N of the sanctuary are ruins of a theatre (Classical to Roman times) and Roman thermae with bichrome mosaics depicting a marine thiasos. There is a local museum.
[2nd c. AD inscription from Isthmia]
To the ancestral Gods and the fatherland, Publius Licinius son of Publius Priscus Iuventianus, of the Aemilian tribe, high priest for life, constructed the lodgings for the athletes from the Oikoumene [settled world] who were present for the Isthmia and he also made from his own funds the Palaimonion together with its ornaments and the enagisterion and the sacred entrance and the altars of the ancestral gods together with the peribolos and the pronaos and the examining chambers, and the temple of Helios and the statue in it and the peribolos, and the peribolos of the sacred grove and the temples in it, of Demeter and Kore, and of Dionysos, and of Artemis together with the statues in them and the ornaments and pronaoi. And he restored the temples of Eueteria [Prosperity] and of Kore and the Plutoneion and the ramps and retaining walls destroyed by earthquakes and age. He also set up the stoa next to the stadium with its vaulted rooms and decorations for the agoranomia (market administration). IGIV 203 tr. adapted from Frey/Gregory Hesperia 2016.
Wikidata ID: Q16600469
Trismegistos Geo: 15746
Manto: 9612969

Info: Archaeological Atlas of the Aegean

(Archaeological Atlas of the Aegean, Ministry of the Aegean)

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