Qualla: Temple of Aphaia https://qualla.com/temple-of-aphaia en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:30 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/s/w/8/w/temple-of-aphaia-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Temple of Aphaia https://qualla.com/temple-of-aphaia Temple of Aphaia: Introduction https://qualla.com/temple-of-aphaia/ Photo credit Paweł 'pbm' Szubert (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. Her name means "the one who vanished." Aphaia was a goddess worshipped at exactly one place on Earth - this hilltop on the eastern flank of Aegina, 160 meters above the Saronic Gulf. The Cretans told a story about a nymph named Britomartis who fled the advances of King Minos, leapt from a fisherman's boat, ran into a grove on Aegina, and disappeared. The locals said she became Aphaia, and they built her a temple here, and they kept worshipping her long after the rest of Greece had moved on to better-known names. From the columns that still stand, you can see Athens across the water on a clear day. The Athenians could see this hilltop too, which mattered.

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Image: Paweł 'pbm' Szubert (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/w/8/w/temple-of-aphaia-wp/sw8w-temple-of-aphaia-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Temple of Aphaia: The Goddess Who Belonged Here https://qualla.com/temple-of-aphaia/ Photo credit Greece_location_map.svg: Lencer / derivative work: Uwe Dedering (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. Cult activity on this hilltop reaches back to the 14th century BC. Excavators have found an unusual concentration of female figurines from the Late Bronze Age, including kourotrophoi - mother-and-child statuettes that imply a fertility cult older than any Greek pantheon. Whoever ...

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Image: Greece_location_map.svg: Lencer / derivative work: Uwe Dedering (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/w/8/w/temple-of-aphaia-wp/sw8w-temple-of-aphaia-the-goddess-who-belonged-here.mp3 0:06 2 full Temple of Aphaia: Two Temples, One Hill https://qualla.com/temple-of-aphaia/ Photo credit George E. Koronaios, CC BY-SA 4.0. The temple visible today is not the first. Around 510 BC fire destroyed an earlier Doric temple on this same spot - smaller, with painted limestone elements that the rebuilders carefully buried in the new terrace fill, where they preserved beautifully. That accident of constructi...

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Image: George E. Koronaios | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/w/8/w/temple-of-aphaia-wp/sw8w-temple-of-aphaia-two-temples-one-hill.mp3 0:06 3 full Temple of Aphaia: The Pediments That Aren't Here Anymore https://qualla.com/temple-of-aphaia/ Photo credit Unknown artist, Public domain. In 1811, two young men on the Grand Tour climbed this hill: Charles Robert Cockerell, an English architect, and the Baltic German Otto Magnus von Stackelberg. They found the fallen pediment sculptures lying in the rubble - two complete sets, the east and west, depicting Aegina's ...

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Image: Unknown artist | Public domain

]]> Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/w/8/w/temple-of-aphaia-wp/sw8w-temple-of-aphaia-the-pediments-that-arent-here-anymore.mp3 0:06 4 full Temple of Aphaia: Two Trojan Wars in Stone https://qualla.com/temple-of-aphaia/ Photo credit Nikoskpa, CC BY-SA 4.0. The pediments told a deliberate story about Aegina's pedigree. The myth ran like this: Zeus seduced the nymph Aegina, who bore Aiakos, the first king of the island. Aiakos fathered Telamon and Peleus. Telamon was the father of Ajax. Peleus was the father of Achilles. The west ped...

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Image: Nikoskpa | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/w/8/w/temple-of-aphaia-wp/sw8w-temple-of-aphaia-two-trojan-wars-in-stone.mp3 0:06 5 full Temple of Aphaia: Standing Among the Pines https://qualla.com/temple-of-aphaia/ Photo credit Vgargan, CC BY-SA 4.0. Twenty-five of the original thirty-two outer columns still stand, restored carefully in stages between the 1950s and the work of German archaeologist Dieter Ohly's team from 1966 to 1979. The hilltop is quiet most days. Pine trees line the approach, and the breeze off the Saronic...

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Image: Vgargan | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/s/w/8/w/temple-of-aphaia-wp/sw8w-temple-of-aphaia-standing-among-the-pines.mp3 0:06 6 full