Temple C (Temple of Apollo)
Selinus, Sicily, Magna Graecia, Italy
Another post of Magna Graecia! Interesting to see this architecture developing next to, influenced by, and branching out of the now-forming strict Greek architecture.
It was one of the most ancient of the temples at Selinus, having probably been built on the acropolis a little after the middle of the sixth century BCE. Temple C was probably used as an archive (hundreds of seals have been recovered from it) and was dedicated to Apollo.
he building has a peristyle colonnade around the naos (peripteros) with six columns at the front (hexastyle) and seventeen on its long sides, leading to a very elongated floorplan, far from the canonical 1:2 proportion, but paralleled by some other archaic temples, such as the Temple of Hera at Olympia. A flight of eight steps takes up the whole of the front side, with the rest of the crepidoma has four steps as at the temple in Corinth, following a rule which remains constant in Sicily.
The pronaos has a two rows of columns, not placed in relation to the proportions of the naos. The opisthodomos was transformed into an empty space behind the naos (adyton), as is common among the doric temples of Magna Graecia. The columns were exceptionally slender (8.65 metres high) and the intercolumniation was wide in the facade, but on the sides was contracted to a more sensible dimension. The columns’ diameters vary widely, following a flexible pattern with little regard for the rules of the doric order, which had already become strict in Mainland Greece.