Temple of Hera, Olympia

The Temple of Hera, or Heraion, is an ancient Archaic Greek temple at Olympia, Greece, that was dedicated to Hera, queen of the Greek Gods. The temple was built in approximately 590 BC, but was destroyed by an earthquake in the early 4th century AD.

In the Archaic Greek time period, the temple stored items important to Greek culture, and other offerings of the people. In modern times, the torch of the Olympic flame is lit in its ruins.

The Heraion at Olympia, located in the north of the sacred precinct, the Altis, is one of the earliest Doric temples in Greece, and the oldest peripteral temple at that site, having a single row of columns on all sides. The location may have previously been the place of worship of an older cult.

The temple was erected in around 590 BC, most likely as a dedication by the Triphylian polis of Skillous. It is suggested that this dedication by a nearby city would originally have been in honour of the main patron deity at Olympia, Zeus, and rededicated to Hera, his wife and sister, at a later point—perhaps after 580 BC when control of Olympia had passed from Triphylia to Elis, or in the 5th century BC when the famous Temple of Zeus was built.

The temple measures 50.01 by 18.76 m (164.1 by 61.5 ft) at the level of the temple platform, the stylobate. It was longer and narrower than the common architecture of the previous era, though the elongated proportions are a common feature of early Doric architecture. It has a peripteros — a colonnaded perimeter — of 6 by 16 columns which were originally wooden because those were the materials available at the time.

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