Qualla: Temple of Poseidon, Sounion

Temple of Poseidon, Sounion: Introduction

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit GeorgeKokkos, CC BY-SA 4.0. Lord Byron carved his name into one of the columns. So did everyone else worth a damn in 19th-century Romanticism, though the British Museum's discreet later erasures have left fewer signatures than there used to be. The Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion is one of those places that has been a tourist attraction so long that the graffiti is itself a historical record. The temple sits on a 60-meter cliff at the southern tip of Attica, a triangular promontory of marble jutting into the Aegean. For sailors leaving Athens for the Cyclades or returning from Crete or Asia Minor, this was the last patch of Athenian land going out and the first sign of home coming back. The Greeks built a temple here for the same reason. They wanted the god of the sea to see his own house from the water.

Image: GeorgeKokkos | CC BY-SA 4.0

Temple of Poseidon, Sounion: An Older Sanctuary

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Edward Dodwell, Public domain. Worship at Sounion is far older than the standing temple. Excavators have found evidence of sanctuaries on the cape going back to the 11th century BC. The first significant temples to Athena and Poseidon went up around 700 BC, and within a century kouroi, life-size standing statu...

Image: Edward Dodwell | Public domain

Temple of Poseidon, Sounion: Rebuilt in Pericles's Athens

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dimitris Drougoutis from Athens, Greece, CC BY-SA 2.0. An earlier Archaic temple stood here, possibly destroyed during the Persian invasions of 480 BC. The temple visible today was built between 444 and 440 BC, during the same Periclean building program that produced the Parthenon. The architect, whose name has not survived, was clea...

Image: Dimitris Drougoutis from Athens, Greece | CC BY-SA 2.0

Temple of Poseidon, Sounion: A Captured Persian Ship

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit A.Savin, CC BY-SA 3.0. After the Athenian fleet defeated Xerxes at the Battle of Salamis in 480 BC, ending the Persian invasion, the Athenians chose Sounion as the place to dedicate their thanks to Poseidon. They hauled an entire captured Persian trireme up onto the cape and left it there as a trophy. ...

Image: A.Savin | CC BY-SA 3.0

Temple of Poseidon, Sounion: The Columns of Venice

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JBradyK, CC BY-SA 4.0. Two columns collapsed in 1825. One of them, the fifth from the northeast corner, was dismantled the next year on the orders of Amilcare Paulucci, commander of the Imperial Austrian Navy. Five of its eight original drums and the capital were shipped to Venice, where they were reas...

Image: JBradyK | CC BY-SA 4.0

Temple of Poseidon, Sounion: The Sunset Cliche, and Why It Works

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mierlo at English Wikipedia, CC BY 2.5. Sounion's sunsets have been photographed and painted and described to the point of cliche. The cape faces west across the Saronic Gulf, the sun drops behind the islands of Aegina and the distant Peloponnese, and the white marble of the columns picks up the orange light and holds ...

Image: Mierlo at English Wikipedia | CC BY 2.5