Heraion of Samos - Ionic temple dedicated to Hera

One of the places I was looking forward to visiting while on Samos was the Heraion of Samos. The Heraion of Samos was a large sanctuary to the goddess Hera, located in the southern region of Samos, Greece, approximately 6 km southwest of the ancient city of Pythagoreion. The Late Archaic Heraion of Samos stands in a low, marshy river basin near the sea and was the first of the gigantic free-standing Ionic temples. Earlier erections at this site date back to the Geometric Period of the 8th century BC and earlier.

Entry to the site is gained via an impressive roadway.

Entrance to Heraion of Hera

According to Samian myth, the Goddess Hera was born under a lygos tree. An annual festival known as the Toneia was held, where Hera was symbolically bound with lygos branches.

The Greek poet Homer wrote of her:

An impressive number of buildings once adorned the site with various temples and other constructions being added over the years.

Catalogue of monuments

Site Plan

I'll return to look at some of the other erections at a later date, but today I want to concentrate on the Large Temple of Hera (#1 on the plan).

The one hundred and twelve metre large temple must have been an extremely impressive sight. Today just one column remains standing, but originally there were one hundred and fifty five columns in this temple alone, supporting a gable roof.

Main Temple of Hera

Each of the roof support columns was over twenty one metres tall. Can you imagine what impression that vast building must have had on someone living in a small single room?

Just one of the original one hundred and fifty five columns remains

Each column stood on a base, some were decorative like this one:

Decorated column base

Others were more simple and without decoration. In both cases the column base stood on 'feet.'

Undecorated column base

It's quite hard to get an impression of the size of these bases, I hope this will help:

I can't be absolutely certain, but the Large Temple may have looked something similar to this illustration, although not raised on a plinth:

It was a dipteral temple, that is with a portico of columns two deep, which surrounded it entirely (peripteral). It had a deep square-roofed pronaos in front of a closed cella. Cella and pronaos were divided into three equal aisles by two rows of columns that marched down the pronaos and through the temple. The result was that Hera was worshipped in a temple fitted within a stylized grove of columns, eight across and twenty-one deep. The columns stood on unusual torus bases that were horizontally fluted (see above).

People visiting the Heraion of Samos today have to use their imagination and construct a mental image of what once stood there.

If they can achieve that they will surely be as excited by the site as I was.