The Sanctuary of Athena Pronaia at Delphi

athena-pronaia

Across the street from the Archaeological Museum of Delphi there is a second enclosure that most tourists who go on organized excursions end up missing. This enclosure is divided into two parts and the closest one is the one dedicated to sports: the Porticoed gym.

This gym used to be about 7 meters wide and 178,35 meters long and was built in Poros marble. Today only the original plinth of the columns and a little of the perimeter of the enclosure remain. Even further on we will see a covered track about 7 meters wide, some baths from Roman times and a palestra.

Very close we will run into the call Sanctuary of Athena Pronaia, a complex of buildings that arriving from the gymnasium keep the following order: first is the "house of the priestess" next to the foundations of the last temple of Athena built between 370 and 360 BC, in the Doric style with six columns in front and two others in the Ionian-style interior. And beyond we see the remains of a tholos dating from 390 BC, a circular building with 20 Doric columns on the outside and 10 on the inside, all supported on a stepped pediment.

tholos

Today of all of them we only see three supporting part of the architrave and that makes us imagine its past splendor. Next to it are two treasures that have columns, one Ionic, the other Doric, and opposite two pedestals where the statue of Emperor Hadrian and the famous Delphi trophy used to stand.


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