The Tavole Palatine ('Palatine Tables') are the remains of a hexastyle peripteral Greek temple of Magna Graecia the 6th century BC, dedicated to the goddess Hera and the god Apollo. The temple, located near the Bradano river in the south of Italy, was part of a countryside sanctuary and remains of the wall of the temenos and of a very ancient altar are visible.
The remains are located in the archaeological area of Metapontum, on the last of the Givoni, ancient sandbanks near the right bank of the river Bradano, built over the remains of a neolithic village on the prehistoric road from Siris-Heraclea, about three kilometres from the ancient city of Metapontum.
The temple, restored in 1961, was initially attributed to the cult of the goddess Athena, but a fragment of a vase found in the course of the 1926 archaeological excavations turned out to be a votive dedicated to the goddess Hera, showing that she was the patron of the sanctuary.
The temple was composed of a central naos, preceded by a pronaos and with an adyton at the rear. Fifteen columns with twenty flutes and Doric capitals survive. Of these fifteen columns, ten are on the north side and five on the southern side. Originally there were thirty-two columns, since the temple had a peristasis of twelve columns on each long side and six on each short side. The temple has decayed significantly because it was built with local limestone (so-called mazzarro). In the fifth century BC, the temple had a tiled roof with multi-coloured decoration in the Ionic tradition, with leonine protomes and gargoyles.
Numerous remains of terracotta decoration, statuettes and ceramics, along with smaller column fragments were found near the temple during the 1926 excavations and are now kept at the Museo archeologico nazionale di Metaponto.
References:Ehrenbreitstein Fortress was built as the backbone of the regional fortification system, Festung Koblenz, by Prussia between 1817 and 1832 and guarded the middle Rhine region, an area that had been invaded by French troops repeatedly before. The fortress was never attacked.
Early fortifications at the site can be dated back to about 1000 BC. At about AD 1000 Ehrenbert erected a castle. The Archbishops of Trier expanded it with a supporting castle Burg Helferstein and guarded the Holy Tunic in it from 1657 to 1794. Successive Archbishops used the castle's strategic importance to barter between contending powers; thus in 1672 at the outset of war between France and Germany the Archbishop refused requests both from the envoys of Louis XIV and from Brandenburg's Ambassador, Christoph Caspar von Blumenthal, to permit the passage of troops across the Rhine.