(APOLLONION) is one of the most important monuments of Ortigia, in front of the square Pancali in Syracuse, it is dated in early sixth century BC and is therefore the oldest Doric temple in Sicily or at least the first corresponding to the model that was firmed across the Hellenic world of peripteral temple with stone columns. The temple underwent several transformations: it was Byzantine church, which preserves the front steps and traces of a median door, and then became a mosque islamica.Successivamente overlapped buildings before the Norman church of the Saviour who was then incorporated in a sixteenth-century Spanish barracks and in private buildings, while remaining visible architectural elements. These successive overlapping severely damaged the building that was rediscovered in the 1860s inside the barracks and was reported entirely to light thanks to the excavations carried out by Paolo Orsi in the years between 1938 and 1942.
The temple is the stylobate 55.36 x 21:47 meters, with a provision of 6 x 17 columns of proportion rather squat. Is, in the West greek, the moment of transition between the temple and the wooden structure completely stone, with front hexastyle and a continuous colonnade around the perimeter surrounding the porch and the cell divided into three naves with two interior colonnades, leaner , places to support a coverage in the wooden structure of difficult reconstruction. On the back of the cell was a closed compartment (adyton) typical of temples sicelioti.
The undertaking to build a building with 46 monolithic columns, probably transported by sea, must have seemed exceptional to the same manufacturers, given the unusual presence on the top step of the side And an inscription dedicated to Apollo where the client (or the ‘architect), celebrates the company edificatoria, with an emphasis that betrays the pioneering character of the building.
The remains would venture to reconstruct the original appearance of the temple belonging to the period protodorico and presents constructive uncertainties and style as the excessive closeness of the columns on either side, changes dell’intercolumnio, indifference to the correspondence between triglyphs and columns and aspects archaic form as the planimetric very elongated. The lintel is unusually high, even if lightened rear forming a section L.
Do not miss absolutely experimental aspects as the importance dedicated to the eastern front with double colonnade and central intercolumniation broader and more general research more of an emphasis that representative of proportional harmony. The construction was a pioneering model for the emergence of the Doric style temple in Sicily, representing a kind of prototype that flanked the local aspects in models of the motherland with other peculiar they emerge only in Ancient Greece as the presence dell’adyton , probable site of the sacred and compositional center of the whole building.
Crockery from architectural elements are preserved in the Regional Archaeological Museum ” Paolo Orsi ” in Syracuse , including fragments of mum , and pinnacles and some roofing shingles , probably one of the first produced in Sicily.