DEMETER TEMPLE

Not to be missed. Built in 530-520 B.C., the Temple of Demeter served as a model for the Parthenon in Athens. It was later transformed into a church and basilica. Next to it, a small museum houses the original pediments and some of the objects found on the site. The history of this archaeological site of the utmost importance is intimately linked to that of the island. The particularly fertile Sangri Valley was inhabited very early on by peasants grouping together in small housing units. As early as the 8th century BC, people turned to Demeter (goddess of Agriculture and Harvest) and Persephone (daughter of Zeus and Demeter, goddess of the Underworld, also associated with the return of vegetation in spring) to obtain abundant harvests from them. For a long time, these cults were held at the top of the hill and in the open air. It was only under the tyrant Lygdamis, around 530 BC, that the first marble temple on the island was erected, of which the ruins remain. Near the corner of the temple, two small pits connected by a canal are visible. These are offering pits where the goddesses of Fertility were poured the fruit juice or plants dedicated to them. If we look at the colonnade on the south façade, we can see that the temple is built without any straight lines: the base is convex, the columns are tilted inwards, the architraves are not straight, all the blocks of the walls are tilted. This very precise optical correction system gave the illusion of perfect verticality and horizontality. The Temple of Demeter is the first Greek building to use this ingenious trompe l'oeil, a technique that was taken up a century later by the architect Ictinos during the construction of the Parthenon (from 447 to 438) in Athens.

When Christianity supplanted paganism, the temple was transformed into a church. During the reign of Emperor Justinian (527-565), more extensive modifications were made to transform the building into a basilica divided into three naves by colonnades. The apse (base of a semicircular wall) was built to the east, in order to place the church in the axis of the east, as the Christian tradition dictates. To the south, the ancient portico became the narthex. Only the corner of the wall, which rests on a large rock, has been preserved intact. Other buildings were added to the church between the 6th and 8th centuries for the production of pottery, wine and oil.