Sounio at night

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📍Project: Sounio with the new lights during the night • 🎻Music: ‪@WaterTowerWB‬ • 📜Details: Cape Sounion is noted for its Temple of Poseidon, one of the major monuments of the Golden Age of Athens. Its remains are perched on the headland, surrounded on three sides by the Aegean sea. • Sounion was a deme of the Leontis tribe (phyle) even before its fortification in the Peloponnesian War. • The deme was located between Amphitrope to the west and Thorikos to the north. Its territory included parts of the Mines of Laurion. According to Traill (1986), the center of the settlement was situated somewhat to the north of the cape, between the modern settlements of Ano Sounio and Kato Sounio • Sounion was fortified in the nineteenth year of the Peloponnesian War for the purpose of protecting the passage of the cornships to Athens and was regarded from that time as one of the principal fortresses of Attica. Its proximity to the silver mines of Laurium probably contributed to its prosperity, which passed into a proverb; but even in the time of Cicero it had sunk into decay. The circuit of the walls may still be traced, except where the precipitous nature of the rocks afforded a natural defence. The walls which are fortified with square towers, are of the most regular Hellenic masonry, and enclose a space or a little more than half a mile in circumference. The southern part of Attica, extending northwards from the promontory of Sounion as far as Thoricus on the east, and Anaphlystus on the west, is called by Herodotus the Suniac angle. Though Sounion was especially sacred to Athena, we learn from Aristophanes that Poseidon was also worshipped there. • The original, Archaic-period temple of Poseidon on the site was built of tufa. The Sounion Kouros, discovered in 1906 in a pit east of the temple alongside fragments of other statues, was probably one of a number of votive statues dedicated to Poseidon which probably stood in front of the god's sanctuary. The archaic temple was probably destroyed in 480 BC by Persian troops during Xerxes I's invasion of Greece. After they defeated Xerxes in the naval Battle of Salamis, the Athenians placed an entire captured enemy trireme (warship with three banks of oars) at Sounion as a trophy dedicated to Poseidon. • The temple of Poseidon at Sounion was constructed in 444–440 BC. This was during the ascendancy of the Athenian statesman Pericles, who also rebuilt the Parthenon in Athens. It was built on the ruins of a temple dating from the Archaic period. It is perched above the sea at a height of almost 60 metres. The design of the temple is a typical hexastyle, i.e., it had a front portico with six columns. Only some columns of the Sounion temple stand today, but when intact it would have closely resembled the contemporary and well-preserved Temple of Hephaestus beneath the Acropolis, which may have been designed by the same architect. • As with all Greek temples, the Poseidon building was rectangular, with a colonnade on all four sides. The total number of original columns was 34, of which 15 still stand today. The columns are of the Doric Order. They were made of locally quarried white marble. They were 6.10 m high, with a diameter of 1 m at the base and 79 cm at the top. At the center of the temple, there would have been a hall of worship, a windowless rectangular room, similar to the partly intact hall at the Temple of Hephaestus. It would have contained, at one end facing the entrance, the cult image, a colossal, ceiling-height (6 metres ) bronze statue of Poseidon. • Cape Sounion remains a popular day-excursion for tourists from Athens, with the sunset over the Aegean Sea, as viewed from the ruins, a sought-after sight since the first development of modern tourism in the early 19th century. • The Lavreotiki municipality was established in 1890 under the name of Sounio, and renamed to Lavreotiki in 1891. Cape Sounion itself is located between the villages of Kato Sounio and Legrena. • Forming the southeastern endpoint of the Athens Riviera, Sounion is now an upscale summer home location for Athenians. Construction of villas across the bay northwest of Cape Sounion flourished in the 1960s to 1970s.

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