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Modern Description: The classical temple is fenced, and the foundations are covered in plastic. There is, hoever, an information panel in Greek and English (2019). In 1994, during construction of an apartment building at Zalongou and Adroutsou streets, soft stone foundations of a major temple of the late 5th century BC were discovered (part, however, had been quietly destroyed by the neighboring owner). Subsequent excavations revealed foundations of a smaller temple of the mid-6th century (of Peisistratos?) E across the modern street, along with remains of a road, a columned hall (in an apartment building's front yard), and a probable propylon (in a grassy vacant lot). This was almost certainly the famous sanctuary of Athena Pallenis, near which Peisistratos won an important battle to restore his tyranny. Manoles Korres concluded that the entire superstructure of the classical temple was disassembled and the blocks numbered, then rebuilt in the Athenian agora as the Temple of Ares, during the August period at the end of the 1st c. BCE. A 2019 article by Andrew Stewart et al. (in Hesperia) reconstructs the battered fragments from the architectural sculpture to identify Apollo alongside Athena as being worshipped there, with a stylistic date of around 430 BCE. He argues that the likely inspiration for a temple honoring Apollo Alexikakos (averter of evils) was the plague that hit Athens that year. Supporting this is the fact that the temple's NW/SE axial alignment is directly toward Delos, Apollo's birthplace. The archaic temple is on a different SSW/NNE orientation, facing the main road but directed toward Marathon or Rhamnous.
Wikidata ID: Q70982381
Trismegistos Geo: 54402

Info: ToposText editors

(JBK)

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