Sanctuary of Athena Sounia at Sounion

Sanctuary of Athena Sounia at Sounion

The study of this shrine represents the culmination of over a century of research on the sanctuary of Athena at Sounion, an endeavor whose analysis and publication required three distinct teams. The first was a Greek team led by V. Staïs, who worked intermittently at Sounion from 1897 to 1913 under the auspices of the Archaeological Society and with the assistance of A.K. Orlandos. The second was an American team whose interest was sparked in the 1930s by excavations in the Athenian Agora, where numerous blocks from the temple of Athena Sounias were uncovered; H. Thompson and W. B. Dinsmoor prepared the publication and left behind a manuscript that was ultimately entrusted to B. A. Barletta, a scholar renowned for her work on the Greek orders. Following Barletta's passing before the completion of the project, her collaborator D. Scahill stepped in to finalize and bring this long-standing study to fruition.

Sanctuary of Athena Sounia at Sounion from NE
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Although the delay in publication might suggest a lack of interest in the site, the sanctuary of Athena was simply overshadowed by the nearby sanctuary of Poseidon, whose standing columns have long captivated travelers—such as J.-M. de Heredia in Les Trophées (1893)—and continue to draw crowds of tourists today. While Poseidon’s temple still stands proudly, very little remains in situ at Athena’s sanctuary because its main temple was dismantled and partially reassembled in the Athenian Agora.

General plan of the sanctuary of Athena
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Nevertheless, the site itself is a remarkable complex comprising two temples (one large and one small), an altar connected to the smaller temple, and a bothros whose artifacts—along with the fill used to level the sanctuary floor prior to construction—date to the 7th–6th centuries BCE, providing a terminus post quem for the site's monumentalization. Enclosed by two distinct periboloi (one regular and rectangular, and another slightly oval enclosure of unclear purpose with no interior remains), the sanctuary ultimately centers around the Great Temple, which stands out as a truly exceptional construction.

Small Doric Temple from SE
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Small Doric Temple

The small Doric temple at the sanctuary was constructed with walls made of a double row of irregular blocks and featured a wide marble threshold. In her reconstruction, B. A. Barletta places two prostyle columns onto two discovered bases, creating an unusually wide intercolumniation of 4.48 meters against an internal depth of 5.80 meters—a configuration that would necessitate a wooden architrave. This yields a curious, unprecedented façade design lacking any scaled reconstruction; alternatively, one might consider whether these bases were actually meant for votive columns (as seen in front of the Keraton at Delos), which would allow the temple to maintain more canonical dimensions for a simple chapel (5.80 x 3.95 inside, rather than the unusual 9.25 x 3.95m measured from the column centers). Unresolved questions also linger regarding a series of Doric columns hypothesized to form a canopy, enclosure, or ikria around the nearby altar, as well as the statue base inside the sekos, which provides little evidence due to having been overturned and reused.

To date the structure, Barletta analyzed its Doric capital and associated architectural terracotta, placing its construction around 500 BCE. Architecturally, the building draws heavily on Cycladic models—evidenced by its double-faced wall construction, widened façade, and broad doorway—while featuring a Corinthian-style roofing system. Although direct confirmation remains elusive due to a lack of decisive evidence, the temple was likely dedicated to Athena, mirroring the sanctuary's Great Temple.

Great Ionic Temple from E
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Great Ionic Temple

The Great Temple of Athena Sounias presents an entirely unique architectural design without direct precedent or successor, characterized by a exceptionally compact sekos (11.14 x 15.582m) flanked by outer colonnades along only its southern and eastern facades (featuring 10 and 12 columns, respectively). Because the cella walls align with the third side column, this arrangement creates a form of "reduced" pseudo-dipteral plan—a design so unusual that early scholars like Staïs and Orlandos assumed it was built in two distinct phases, though modern consensus following Dinsmoor, Thompson, and Barletta views it as a single, unified project. The underlying motivation for this asymmetrical layout remains unclear; economic constraints are ruled out by the extensive use of marble and refined painted ceiling decorations, while hypotheses regarding storage functionality lack supporting evidence. Rather than demonstrating an unquestionable, widespread eclecticism, the singular plan may simply point to the work of an exceptionally creative local architect.

Reconstructed plan of the Great Temple of Athena
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Despite its singular nature, the temple incorporates clear stylistic elements heavily influenced by island architecture, particularly from the nearby Cyclades like Keos and Paros. Key Cycladic traits include a single-stepped crepis, unfluted columns set on disc-shaped bases lacking a torus, a three-part echinus on the capitals with painted rather than carved details, a two-banded architrave, and painted wall decorations.

South-North Section of the Great Temple of Athena
Reconstruction of the structure according to W. B. Dinsmoor, Jr.
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While Barletta hesitates to fully categorize the building within the Cycladic tradition—arguing that the Ionic-Cycladic style had been largely superseded by the Doric order in Attica and the islands by around 480 BCE—existing island monuments continued to serve as visible models. Drawing parallels to Athenian votive columns, Barletta ultimately places the Great Temple within a mid-5th-century BCE "Attic-Ionic" synthesis, framing its unusual architecture as a reflection of broader Mediterranean cosmopolitanism.

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