Apollo's temple by TheWanderingCamel
Or is it his twin sister, Artemis'? Cicero said it was when he wroye about Syracuse back in the 1st century BC. By the time he saw it, the temple was already nearly 500 years old, the oldest monumental stone building in all Sicily and the oldest in the world that has a row of columns along each side. As with the Temple of Athena in the middle of the island (this one is older) the vagaries of history saw it turned first into a Byzantine church, then an mosque, back into a church under the Normans and, finally, a barracks under the Spanish in the 16th century, after which it fell into ruin. During the excavations which began in 1938 and continued until 1943, an inscription was found that states the temple was built by one Kleosthenes and dedicated to Apollo.
Whichever of the sibling gods claims it, little more remains of the temple than two standing columns, a row of broken column stumps, some of the cella wall and enough of the foundations to show very clearly the form the temple took. It's enough to indicate a ground plan that included 17 columns along the length and 6 at the end. Unlike contemporary temples on mainland Greece, there was no portico, and the columns are set closer together than was the case with mainland temples. The temple's massive proportions, narrowly spaced columns, and spreading column capitals are all clear indicators of its archaic date.
The site is fenced off and you can only look at the temple from outside the barriers
