page_title: Heraion of Samos
section_title: Third temple (Polycrates temple)
hierarchical_section_title: Heraion of Samos / Description / Temple of Hera / Third temple (Polycrates temple)
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Héraion Samos
context_page_description: The Heraion of Samos was a large sanctuary to the goddess Hera, on the island of Samos, Greece, 6 km southwest of the ancient city of Samos, in the low, marshy basin of the Imbrasos river, near where it enters the sea. The late Archaic temple in the sanctuary was the first of the gigantic free-standing Ionic temples, but its predecessors at this site reached back to the Geometric Period of the 8th century BC, or earlier. The site of temple's ruins, with its sole standing column, was designated a joint UNESCO World Heritage Site, along with the nearby Pythagoreion in 1992.
context_section_description: After the destruction of the Rhoikos temple, an even larger one was built approximately 40 metres (130 ft) to the west, which is known as the "Great Temple" or the "Polycrates Temple" (3), after the famous tyrant of Samos who ruled around the time of its construction. This temple was 55.2 metres (181 ft) wide and 108.6 metres (356 ft), one of the largest floor plan of any Greek temple.  
  The first foundations of the cella were laid in the second half of the sixth century and are usually associated with the reign of Polycrates. The foundations of the peripteral colonnade and the pronaos were not laid until around 500 BC. Construction continued into the Roman period, but this temple was never wholly finished. The cult statue was eventually transferred to the Roman temple, though other statues and votives continued to be stored in it. 
  The geographer Strabo, who wrote at the beginning of the first century AD, describes the temple:
  As one sails towards the city [of Samos in the island of the same name] ... on the left is the suburb [of Samos city] near the Heraion (Temple of Hera), and also the Imbrasos River, and the Heraion, which consists of an ancient temple and a great shrine, which latter is now a repository of tablets. Apart from the number of the tablets placed there, there are other repositories of votive tablets and some small chapels full of ancient works of art. And the temple, which is open to the sky, is likewise full of most excellent statues. Of these, three of colossal size, the work of Myron, stood upon one base; Antony took these statues away, but Augustus Caesar restored two of them, those of Athena and Herakles, to the same base, although he transferred the Zeus to the Capitolium [in Rome], having erected there a small chapel for that statue.
  — Strabo, Geography 14. 1. 14
  In Byzantine times, the temple served as a quarry, so that it was eventually dismantled to the very foundations, leaving only the foundations and a single column shaft, which seems to have been retained as a navigation point for ships.
caption: A reconstruction of the Great temple (front view)
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