Ancient Greek Sites

Temple of Demeter

The so-called Temple of Demeter (the remains of which are located below of the church of San Biagio) can be dated between 480 and 470 BCE. This temple offers an interesting example of distylous building in antis, i.e.without an outer colonnade. It has a simple cella preceded by a pronaos (ante-room) with two columns. Still preserved from the original structure are the base (30 by 13 m approx and partly visible), the oute ...

Founded: 480 BCE | Location: Agrigento, Italy

Sybaris

Sybaris was an important city of Magna Graecia. The city was founded in 720 BC by Achaean and Troezenian settlers. Sybaris amassed great wealth thanks to its fertile land and busy port. Its inhabitants became famous among the Greeks for their hedonism, feasts, and excesses, to the extent that 'sybarite' and 'sybaritic' have become bywords for opulence, luxury and outrageous pleasure-seeking. In 510/09 BC the city was su ...

Founded: 720 BCE | Location: Cassano all'Ionio, Italy

Palace of Odysseus

Palace of Odysseus in Ithaki (Ithaca) island was built probably around 1300 BCE. The Greek archaeologists have claimed that the palace was the home of Odysseus, the famous hero of Homer’s epic poem. The complex also features and a well from the 8th century BC, roughly the period in which Odysseus is believed to have been king of Ithaca.

Founded: 1300 BCE | Location: Ithaki, Greece

Kamarina

Kamarina was an ancient city on the southern coast of Sicily. It was founded by Syracuse in 599 BC, but destroyed in 552 BC. The Geloans, however, founded it anew in 461 BC, under the Olympic charioteer Psaumis of Camarina. It seems to have been in general hostile to Syracuse, but, though an ally of Athens in 427 BC, it gave some slight help to Syracuse in 415–413 BC. It was destroyed by the Carthaginians in 405 BC, re ...

Founded: 599 BCE | Location: Vittoria, Italy

Helorus

Helorus was an ancient Greek city of Sicily, situated near the east coast. It was probably a colony of Syracuse, of which it appears to have continued always a dependency. The name is first found in Scylax; for, though Thucydides repeatedly mentions the road leading to Helorus from Syracuse, which was that followed by the Athenians in their disastrous retreat, he never speaks of the town itself. It was one of the cities w ...

Founded: 8th century BCE | Location: Noto, Italy

Maroneia

Maroneia (Greek: Μαρώνεια) is a village and a former municipality in Rhodope regional unit. In legend, it was said to have been founded by Maron, a son of Dionysus, or even a companion of Osiris. According to Pseudo-Scymnus it was founded by Chios in the fourth year of the fifty-ninth Olympiad (540 BCE). According to Pliny, its ancient name was Ortagures or Ortagurea. It was located on the hill of Agios Charalampo ...

Founded: 6th century BCE | Location: Maroneia-Sapes, Greece

Sami Acropolis

Sami was a powerful fortified town whose ruins are found in Lapitha Mountain, over the current port town. This town was an autonomous and independent state with its own coin inhabited from the Paleolithic Times. A strong and densely populated town with strong fortifications, it was located on top of the cliff. Several references of Ancient Sami are found in Homer"s poems (Heliad, Odyssey) when Sami fought in the Troj ...

Founded: 6th century BCE | Location: Kefalonia, Greece

Azoria

Azoria is an archaeological site on a double-peaked hill overlooking the Gulf of Mirabello in eastern Crete. The excavations have recovered evidence of an Archaic Greek city, established c. 600 BC, following a long period of continuous occupation throughout the Early Iron Age or Greek Dark Age (1200-700 BC) and Early Archaic (700-600 BC) (or Orientalizing) periods. The city was destroyed by fire early in the 5th ...

Founded: 600 BC | Location: Kavousi, Greece

Cave di Cusa

Cave di Cusa was an ancient stone quarry in Sicily. This site was quarried beginning in the first half of the 6th century BC and its stone was used to construct the temples in the ancient Greek city Selinunte. It was abandoned in 409 BC when the city was captured by the Carthaginians. It is now an official Sicilian Archeological Zone and a popular tourist site.

Founded: 559 BC | Location: Campobello di Mazara, Italy

Capo Soprano

Built in 333 BC along Gela"s western coastline at Capo Soprano by the tyrant of Syracuse, Timoleon, Gela"s ancient Greek fortifications are remarkably well preserved, most likely the result of being covered by sand dunes for thousands of years before their discovery in 1948. The 8m-high walls were originally built to prevent huge amounts of sand being blown into the city by the blustery sea wind. Today authoriti ...

Founded: 333 BCE | Location: Gela, Italy

Byllis

Byllis was an ancient city located in the region of Illyria, today in Vlorë, 25 kilometers from the sea in Albania. Dating back to the 4th century BCE, it is one of the most important archeological sites in Albania. The city, although a Greek speaking settlement was located on the territory of the Illyrian tribe of Bylliones. The later were first attested in the mid-4th century BC, in the description of the geographer P ...

Founded: 4th century AD | Location: Vlorë, Albania

Temple of Olympian Zeus

The Temple of Olympian Zeus, the second oldest temple in Syracuse after that of Apollo in Ortigia, rose in the ancient village called Polichne, in a panoramic position, slightly elevated. The Doric building, surrounded by large monolithic columns, appeared really impressive. Today, what is left of the huge building (which measured 20.50 meters x 60) is part of crepidoma and two columns of the south side. From it there ...

Founded: 6th century BCE | Location: Syracuse, Italy

Archaeological Park of Occhiolà

On the three ridges of the hill of Terravecchia it is situated the ancient area of Occhiolà, that developed him along an only principal road axle of medieval origin, it notices a great deal simple structures, typical of a country suburb. On the tall part the imposing castle was found, of which lean traces remain, among which a buttress realized with blocks of square stone. This hilly system that constitutes the greate ...

Founded: 5th century BCE | Location: Grammichele, Italy

Palike

Palike was an ancient city on Sicily. Its archeological site is located in Rocchicella on a spur of basalt in the valley of the Margi river. There are no certain origins to this ancient town. Diodorus Siculus writes that it was founded in 453 BCE by the native Sikel leader Ducetius. It was named after the sanctuary of the Palici nearby. The city was surrounded by strong walls and grew rapidly because of the fertility of i ...

Founded: 453 BCE | Location: Rocchicella, Italy

Adranon

Monte Adranone is a mountain rising 899 metres above sea level in the north of the comune of Sambuca di Sicilia. At the summit of the mountain are the remains of the ancient city of Adranon, one of the more important archaeological sites in Sicily. Adranon was settled at the beginning of the 5th century BC, destroyed during the 3rd century BC, according to data from archaeological excavations. The city is distinct from t ...

Founded: 5th century BCE | Location: Sambuca di Sicilia, Italy

The Macedonian Tomb

The Tomb of Agios Athanasios is located under an enormous tumulus in the area of Thessaloniki, yet only 15 kilometers away from Pella. It has been looted but the small single chamber offers a unique example of richly decorated walls in surprisingly fresh colors. It dates from the last quarter of the fourth century BC, the Alexander-era. Reason enough to stop here for a moment. As customary, the front of the tomb was enti ...

Founded: 4th century BCE | Location: Chalkidona, Greece

Hephaestia

Hephaestia was a town of Ancient Greece, now an archeological site on the northern shore of Lemnos. It was named in the honor of Hephaistos, Greek god of metallurgy, whose cult was maintained on the island. It was once the capital of the island (8th to 6th centuries BCE), of which only the ruins remain. The Greek theater dates from between the late 5th and early 4th century BCE. It underwent reconstruction from 2000 to 2 ...

Founded: 8th century BCE | Location: Lemnos, Greece

Choros Kaveiriou

The ancient temple of Kavirio on Lemnos is situated 3 kilometers from the archaeological site of Ifestia, just opposite to Tigani Bay. It is an ancient sanctuary dedicated to the two gods Kaviri, mythical gods of northern Aegean with mystic ceremonies. The sanctuary of Kavirio, which was assumed to have been built around the 6th or 7th century BC, is older than the one in Samothraki, where this particular god was also wo ...

Founded: 7th century BCE | Location: Lemnos, Greece

Caulonia

Caulonia was an ancient city of Magna Graecia on the shore of the Ionian Sea. In ancient times the shoreline of Caulonia lay 300 meter further seawards. There is no literary evidence for the foundation date of Caulonia, but archeological evidence shows that it was founded early in the second half of the seventh century BCE. Both Strabo and Pausanias mention that the city was founded by Achaean Greek colonists. In 389 BC ...

Founded: 7th century BCE | Location: Monasterace, Italy

Vroukounta

The ancient Vrykous city of the Dorians may have reached its peak during the 4th and the 3rd centuries BC, but this place seems to have been inhabited since the Minoan – Mycenaean era. The ancient city has been completely looted. Its carved tombs stand wide open with no grave goods left in them. The residents Christianized the place during the next centuries (according to reports of the Archaeological Service three basi ...

Founded: 4th century BCE | Location: Karpathos, Greece