The BEST Preserved Greek Temples in the World

Greece has some fantastic temples. Beautiful ancient temples that have been standing there for two and a half thousand years. Like these temples to the goddess Hera. This temple to Athena. A stunning mountain temple. This well-preserved beauty. And this one. I'm just kidding. These are not in Greece. But in Italy. Many people don't know that Southern Italy was Greek for a very long time. The ancient Greeks founded many colonies here starting from 750 BC. Many of these colonies grew to become rich and powerful cities in antiquity. And some are still large modern cities today. For example, Neapolis, a very important Greek city, became modern Napoli, Naples. And Syracuse, another powerful Greek city in Sicily, became Syracusa, Syracuse. In these cities, most of the archaeological remains from the Greek period are covered up forever. Except for a few small windows into the past which give us an idea. Like the Temple of Apollo in the heart of Syracuse. But there were ancient Greek colonies in Italy that were abandoned and never built up again. Where we get a better idea of what they looked like. While Greece itself does have a bunch of well-preserved temples, overall, Italy's temples are in better condition. There's a lot to say about the Greek colonization of Italy. But in this video, I want to focus mainly on the temples. We'll be visiting four stunning locations, which have some of the best Greek temples in the world. Our first stop is the beautiful site of Paestum. Its Greek name was Posidonia. Or in English, Posidonia, the city of Poseidon, god of the sea. When it was founded in 600 BC, it was right on the water. But today, the coastline has shifted 700 meters away. The ancient defensive wall is still intact all around the site. Most of the land inside the wall is private farmland and hasn't been excavated. But the middle section has, revealing a well-developed urban plan. All these structures are reduced to their foundations, and most date from the Roman period. But the Doric temples are all original Greek. Even during Roman times, the worship of the Greek gods in these temples would have continued uninterrupted, as the Romans allowed their conquered people to practice their religions as before. On the north side of the city is a temple to Athena, the goddess of wisdom, warfare, and intelligence. It's very well preserved, but the cella is completely gone. The cella was the inner chamber within the columns that housed the statue of the god or goddess of the temple. To give you an idea, this was the cella inside the Parthenon in Athens, with its own statue of Athena. At Paestum, archaeologists know that it was a temple to Athena because they found little terracotta statues of her in and around the temple, which were left by worshippers as offerings to the goddess. At the southern end is a temple to Hera, the goddess of family, marriage, and women. Here too the cella is gone, and they also found little statues of her, indicating who the temple was for. It's the oldest temple in Paestum, and has a very heavy, archaic look. This is because the columns are short and fat in proportion to the rest. And it's a wide temple in proportion to its length. Compare that with the temple next to it, which was built 100 years later, and has more harmonious proportions, giving it that more refined, classical look that everyone knows. The contrast between the two gives a clear picture of how Greek architecture evolved. This one was originally thought to be dedicated to Poseidon, because surely a city named Poseidonia must have had a temple to Poseidon, but different artifacts found here suggest that it was dedicated to Apollo the Healer or Hera as well, they don't really know. But whatever god was worshipped here, this is considered one of the very best preserved Greek temples in the world, and in my opinion, in the top three. The cella walls are gone, but amazingly, the double rows of columns inside it are still standing. Many Greek temples had a double colonnade inside, including the Parthenon, but these are gone in the Parthenon, and to the best of my knowledge, the only temple in the world that still has a double colonnade is this one. So it's very unique. When the Romans conquered Poseidonia in 273 BC, they renamed it Paestum. It was a prosperous Roman city for many more centuries, but was eventually abandoned in the Middle Ages. The nearby river kept silting up the coastline, pushing it farther and farther away, and turning the whole area into a marshy swamp. But the swamp was a blessing in disguise, because it preserved the site. It naturally attracted mosquitoes that carried malaria, which made the site a no-go zone, and kept humans away. So the temples were somewhat protected from having their stone taken away and reused in other buildings. And for a thousand years, they just sat there, undisturbed in the middle of the swamp, and basically left alone. Then in the 1700s, the aristocracy of Northern Europe was becoming very interested in the classical world, and flocked to Greece and Italy on a kind of cultural pilgrimage known as the Grand Tour. Although off the beaten path, some of them ventured out to visit Paestum, and they painted it too, which gives us a feeling of what it was like for them, and the magic that they experienced. I would have loved to be one of those people, to be able to see the site when it was still so raw and untouched, before the age of modern tourism. Before we move on to the next temple location, some big news for my channel. Street Gems just got its first sponsor. Now, I pour hundreds of hours into producing my videos, so with sponsors, I'll be able to get videos out to you more often. And this video is brought to you by manscaped.com, the global men's lifestyle brand that is setting the bar higher in men's grooming standards. And they just released a brand new product which is a game changer, the Chairman Pro Electric Foil Shaver. What makes the Chairman Pro game-changing is the 360-degree contouring head and the skin-safe blade heads. It uses FlexAdjust technology, which means that the blades and pivoting head adjust to the contours of your face and neck, maintaining great contact with your skin at every angle so you get a more precise and comfortable shave. It even comes with a built-in LED spotlight to help you see every detail, ensuring that no hair gets missed. The skin-safe blade heads attach magnetically so all the wires are contained inside the machine. This means that it's waterproof so you can use it in the shower and save time, killing two birds with one stone. Hephaestus, the Greek god of fire and metalworking, was a bit of a bushy fella, as you can tell. Maybe if you used the Chairman Pro, his wife Aphrodite wouldn't have gone off and had an affair with Ares, the god of war, who clearly did use the Chairman Pro. Look at that handsome guy. So if you want to be handsome like the Greek god of war, then you should definitely get the Chairman Pro. Manscaped is now offering a 20% discount to all my viewers. Just go to the link in the description or the top comment and use the promo code STREETGEMS for 20% off your order, plus free international shipping. Thank you Manscaped for sponsoring this video and now let's get back to the temples. Moving south to Sicily, we arrive at the ruin of Segesta, up in the Sicilian highlands. Now, if I told you that Segesta was a Greek city, you would totally believe me, right? Because it looks Greek. But it was actually a city of the Illymians, one of the indigenous peoples of Sicily. However, the Illymians were heavily influenced by the Greeks, and this is reflected in their architecture. With a Greek theatre on top of the hill and a Greek-style door at the temple. So I think it counts in the list of best preserved Greek temples. I've mentioned the term Doric already, so for those of you who don't know, it's one of the three main styles in which Greco-Roman temples were built. All the surviving Greek temples in Italy are Doric. The Illymians made diplomatic relations with various Greek cities, and around 420 BC, when this temple was built, they were allied with Athens. Some scholars think that the temple may have been designed by an Athenian architect, perhaps hired by Segesta. But it was never completed. Several signs indicate this. The Greeks always fluted the columns of Doric temples after they finished assembling them. Fluting is chiseling the vertical grooves down the columns. Because the Illymians mimicked the Greeks, they would have done the same. But here, the columns are not fluted at all, suggesting that it was halted mid-construction. It's not known which god the temple would have been dedicated to. Probably because it was never dedicated at all. In fact, there are no signs of any foundations of a cella either, indicating that it was never even built. There are no ornamentations like sculptures or anything, and the roof was never built either. Around the same time, Segesta was waging a war against the Greek city of Salinas, and some think that this is the reason why it wasn't finished. Perhaps money ran out because of the war, or the temple just became a low priority, and construction was abandoned forever. We are now going to visit that enemy of Segesta. Called Selinunte in Italian, its ancient Greek name was Selinus, or in English, Salinas. This is a massive archaeological park that sits in a beautiful and dramatic position facing the Mediterranean. Looking south is nothing but sea for another 500 kilometers, until you hit Libya. The main part of the site is the Acropolis, with the ruins of four temples. You can see a clear urban grid plan still preserved from the ancient city, and a fortification wall. To the east and west of the Acropolis were two bays which served as the ports of the city, but the rivers that spilled into them eventually filled them up with silt. On the eastern hill are the remains of three more temples, only one of them well preserved. It's designated as Temple E and is believed to be a temple to Hera, but best preserved is only half true. It was actually reconstructed in the 1950s using the original pieces found on site, in a process known as Anastilosis, basically putting Humpty Dumpty back together again. But if you look closely, you can see where they created modern pieces to fill in the gaps. The Greeks took their temples very seriously. Not only were they important religious centers, but they were status symbols for the cities that built them. They required immense resources, including skilled labor, expensive materials, artists, and advanced architectural knowledge, which only wealthy and influential cities could afford. Their architectural sophistication demonstrated not only the city's religious devotion, but also its power and status, enhancing its reputation in the Greek world. They were often built in the most prominent positions of the city, so that everyone could see them. Any ship approaching Salinas would see her impressive temples as it was coming into harbor. This reconstruction illustrates another important thing about Greek temples, that they were painted. You might think that Greek temples at the time were just glistening white stone, because that's how we see them today. But traces of paint found on architectural pieces from temples all around the Mediterranean tell experts that they were painted in all sorts of bright colors. This is Temple G, the Temple of Zeus. It was a monster of a temple, with columns 16 meters high, one of the largest temples in the Greek world. Demonstrating what a powerful city Salinas was. It took them 120 years to build it, but they never got to finish it. Remember that war between Salinas and Segesta? Well, what happened was that Segesta asked for help from Carthage, the powerful maritime city in North Africa. Carthage saw this as an opportunity to expand its influence in Sicily, and came to help Segesta. They landed a huge army in Sicily in 409 BC, marched to Salinas, and sacked it. Construction of the Temple of Zeus halted immediately. 10 kilometers away from Selinunte is a fascinating place called Cave di Cusa, which shows how everything came to a grinding halt. This was the quarry that supplied the stone for the temples. Here you can still see what were probably the last column drums destined for the Temple of Zeus, still attached to the ground in the middle of extraction, or ready to be carried off to the construction site, but left as is, frozen in time. Salinas eventually recovered, but Carthage would destroy it again in 250 BC, and the city would be abandoned forever. But even after that, some of the temples remained standing for many more centuries, until something else would bring them down. When you look at the other temples, you'll understand what happened. Temples F and G, the Temple of Zeus, are lying in dramatic displays of destruction. Just massive piles of broken stone. This level of destruction can only happen by one thing, a powerful earthquake, which possibly happened in the 8th century AD. No other ancient site in the world has this kind of impressive display of temples destroyed by an earthquake, which makes Selinunte one of a kind. Our last stop is the city of Agrigento, the site of the ancient Greek city of Akragas. The main archaeological area is called the Valley of the Temples, which is actually a high ridge, with the remains of 7 Doric temples. Most of them are not so well preserved, and a lot is reconstructed. Those include the Temple of Hercules, Castrum Pollux, and Hera, which sits beautifully on the edge of that ridge. But one temple stands out as remarkably well preserved, the Temple of Concordia. Now, Concordia was a Roman goddess, the goddess of harmony and agreement in relationships, marriage and society. Her Greek counterpart was Harmonia, harmony. Her name can be seen in the Italian word concordare, to agree, or in the English word accord, agreement. I wonder if there's also a linguistic connection to the word chord, that is, multiple musical notes working together in agreement, in harmony. But anyways, aren't we dealing with Greek gods? How come we're talking about a Roman goddess? Well yes, this is a Greek temple, but they don't know which Greek god was actually worshipped here. It came to be known as the Temple of Concordia by mistake, because in the Renaissance, a Latin inscription with the word Concordia was found near the temple. It's from the Roman period, and the person who discovered it made the assumption that it's a temple to her, and from then on, the name stuck. This is also considered one of the best preserved Greek temples in the world, and I also think in the top three. So how was it so well preserved? Well, in 597 AD, it was converted into a church. Converting pagan temples into churches is one reason why some survived, because they continued being used and maintained. Same story for the Temple of Hephaestus in Athens, which was also converted into a church, and is the third one on my list of top three. But we can see this more clearly at the Temple of Athena in Syracuse, which is still a functioning church today. This is what it looked like in antiquity, but in the middle ages, they filled in the gaps between the columns, so the church swallowed up the temple. At the Temple of Concordia, notice how they cut holes in the walls of the cella. Here too, the spaces between the columns were filled in, but were later removed in modern times. These modifications essentially turned the space into a floor plan of a Christian basilica. The ancient cella in the middle became the nave of the basilica, and the spaces between the cella and the outer columns became the aisles, and the holes cut into the cella walls allowed access between the spaces. Like all Greek temples, the roof was a wooden construction, so it didn't survive the test of time. But it's one of the few temples where the walls of the cella are almost fully intact. So we have Christianity to thank for preserving this temple. But for the majority of temples, Christianity caused their disappearance. In some cases, there was deliberate destruction of pagan monuments in order to erase them from history. But in most cases, after they were all shut down in late antiquity, they just became irrelevant. They were seen by the Christians as useless, passive monuments from the past, only good for the high-quality stone they were built with. And so they were slowly stripped away, stone by stone, to be used in other buildings. A slow death by a thousand cuts. So out of the hundreds of temples the Greeks built, most have not survived in good shape. But out of those that did, Italy has some of the best ones. Whether preserved by becoming a church, by a swamp, or simply by sheer luck. Thankfully, we do have enough examples to get a good understanding of how the Greeks built their temples, and the genius and mastery that went into these beautiful monuments.