page_title: Ancient Greek temple
section_title: Corinthian temples
hierarchical_section_title: Ancient Greek temple / Temples of the different architectural orders / Corinthian temples
caption_attribution_description: The remaining structure of The Temple of Olympian Zeus at Athens. It had been cloudy all day, and with the clouds gathering to the East, the sun came out from the West to Illuminate the stone.
context_page_description: Greek temples were structures built to house deity statues within Greek sanctuaries in ancient Greek religion. The temple interiors did not serve as meeting places, since the sacrifices and rituals dedicated to the respective deity took place outside them, within the wider precinct of the sanctuary, which might be large. Temples were frequently used to store votive offerings. They are the most important and most widespread building type in Greek architecture. In the Hellenistic kingdoms of Southwest Asia and of North Africa, buildings erected to fulfil the functions of a temple often continued to follow the local traditions. Even where a Greek influence is visible, such structures are not normally considered as Greek temples. This applies, for example, to the Graeco-Parthian and Bactrian temples, or to the Ptolemaic examples, which follow Egyptian tradition. Most Greek temples were oriented astronomically.
  Between the 9th century BCE and the 6th century BCE, the ancient Greek temples developed from the small mud brick structures into double-porched monumental "peripteral" buildings with colonnade on all sides, often reaching more than 20 metres in height.
caption: The Olympieion at Athens.
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