Audio tour Temple G

To which Temple did this massive column belong to? It was called “Fuso della Vecchia”.

It belonged to The temple G, the last, more at north than Temples E and F, the most monumental temple of the eastern part of the old town!

Today, you can only see ruins, but it is enough to understand that it was the largest of the temples in Selinunte and how it was also one of the greatest of the Greek world!

Its construction lasted more than 100 years, but the inhabitants of Selinunte did not see it completed, because their city was destroyed by the Carthaginians, in 409 BC, over2400 years ago!

What do these ruins tell us? What did the archaeologists manage to understand studying these ruins?

As for all Greek temples, the façade was oriented to the East, but it was more monumental: 8 columns decorated the short sides and 17 the long ones!

Look at the remains of the columns that are broken among the ruins: they were formed of overlapping blocks. Most of these columns are smooth, while some are grooved.

You can ask: “Why are they so different”? In fact, the construction of the Temple took so long that the columns reflect two different styles: the fluted ones are the oldest.

On the corner of the temple, on the ground, a capital tipped over and pieces of entablature and blocks of columns are visible.

Do you know that it was so big that it can be compared to a football field?

To enter in the temple you could have gone up the steps of which the crepidoma was shaped; going past the column and going through another row of four columns that once decorated the temple, you could have gone into the porch, a kind of entrance of the temple.

From the Pronaos you could have access to the cell, the heart of the temple. The cell was also the most monumental of all: it was divided into 3 naves by 2 rows of columns on superimposed levels and every aisle had a door with a gate.

Down the center aisle, raised on a step, there was a room reserved for the statue of the deity.

On the back of the cell and of the entire building, opposite the porch, there was the opisthodomos, a covered area, bordered on the left and on the right by the extension of the walls and closed by 2 columns, where you could enter only from the rear entrance of the temple, on the West side.

What remains of the decorations of this monumental building? Very little actually!

Among the ruins of the temple only a fragment of a statue of a giant was found.

To which god, among the Greek gods, was this building dedicated to? Obviously to Zeus, the father of the gods!

Let’s discover together what the archaeologists have found here, to attribute this temple just to Zeus!

This text has been translated by Anna Gullo with the collaboration of Angela Gisone. The narrator is Alessia Guarino: class V C from the Primary School "Lombardo Radice".