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Temple of Apollo Zoster


The Temple of Apollo Zoster is a Greek temple, the remains of which are located at Vouliagmeni in Attica, Greece.

The Temple was uncovered when children from the Vouliagmeni Orphanage were playing on what is now known as the Astir Beach. The site now lies sunken, at the back of the Beach, and is surrounded by a lawn and hedges. The Temple is almost at sea level, and so is often flooded outside the summer months.

The inscriptions found on the ruins confirm that the site is the Temple of Apollo Zoster. Excavations were undertaken by the archaeologists K Kourouniotes and M Pittidis during 1926-7. This confirmed references in the ancient literary sources: Pausanias mentions that this was the location of the most important sanctuary of the deme of Aixōnídes Halaí (Greek: Αἰξωνίδες Ἁλαί), in other words, the Saltfields of Aixōnē. This ancient deme included the modern areas of Voula and Vouliagmeni.

The Temple sits on the middle tongue of a three-tongued promontory which was once famously known in antiquity as Cape Zoster. Herodotus writes that, after the battle of Salamis, the Persians mistook the rocks of the headland for Greek ships.

Pausanias believed that in this location Leto, who was pregnant by Zeus, loosened her gilt belt, or zoster, as she was being chased by an angry Hera. Leto believed that she was about to give birth to the twins known as Apollo and Artemis.

The Temple was founded in the sixth century BC, the Archaic Period. It is of rectangular construction, 10.8m by 6.00m, and has a sekos and an adyton. The floor of the Temple "is a unique and fine construction of big, rectangular slabs."

The sekos is separated from the adyton by a wall which was built in a later phase, in the fourth century BC. Inside the sekos are preserved:


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