Just 70 kilometres south-east of Athens, at the southern tip of Attica, lies one of the most famous and impressive sites in Greece, Cape Sounion, or Sounio. Since time immemorial, the cape has been considered a sacred place and was the centre of the two cults of Athena and Poseidon. An ancient legend says that it was from Cape Sounion that the Athenian king Aegeus threw himself into the abyss of the sea when he saw black sails on the horizon and took them as a sign of the defeat of his son Theseus in the fight with Minotaur. True, Theseus did defeat the Minotaur, but forgetting to change the sails, he condemned his grief-stricken father to death. It is worth noting that it was in honour of the Athenian king that the sea was later named "Aegean". The first written mention of Cape Sounion is found in Homer's Odyssey.
The Temple of Poseidon on Cape Sounion, the ruins of which we can see today, was built in the middle of the 5th century BC on the ruins of the sanctuary of the Archaic period, destroyed by the Persians in 480 BC. The temple was a classical periptera - a rectangular structure surrounded on all sides by a colonnade. Doric columns (height - 6,1 m, diameter at the base -1 m, and diameter in the upper part - 79 cm), were made of local Agrilesian marble. The name of the architect who designed the temple of Poseidon is unknown, but historians believe that this is the work of the architect who designed the temple of Hephaestus (Hephaisteion) in Athens, as well as the temple of Nemesis in Ramnunta.
The temple of Poseidon on Cape Sounion was destroyed in 399 by Emperor Arcadius. Unfortunately, only a part of the columns, the remains of the architrave and frieze depicting the battles of the Centaurs and Lapiths, the battle of Theseus and the Minotaur and the Gigantomachy have survived, but nevertheless it is enough to appreciate the monumentality of the ancient structure. On one of the columns you will see the inscription "Byron" carved in stone. It is believed to have been made by the famous English Romantic poet Lord Byron during his first visit to Greece in 1810-1811.
Every year thousands of tourists from all over the world come to this legendary place to admire the fantastic beauty of sunsets over the Aegean Sea and the ruins of the once majestic sanctuary built in honour of Poseidon, the god of the sea.
