Located on the Peloponnese Peninsula southwest of Athens, this Temple of Apollo Epicurius was built during the same period as the world-renowned Parthenon on the Acropolis of Athens, and both are UNESCO World Heritage sites.
The temple was built in the uninhabited mountains of Arcadia. It is a rectangular peripteral building, 39.97 meters long and 16.13 meters wide, featuring a pronaos, a cella, and an opisthodomos. It is oriented from north to south, an orientation that is highly unusual among ancient Greek temples.
This temple was built between approximately 420 and 410 BC, slightly later than the Parthenon on the Acropolis, yet its architectural achievements are in no way inferior to those of the Parthenon. The temple contains the oldest Corinthian capital discovered to date, and its architectural style is bold, combining early Greek style with the clear-cut Doric style.
Some studies suggest that one of the original intentions for building the temple was to escape the plague, which is why the nearest village is more than 13 or 14 kilometers away, and it is even further from the central regions of Greece. Consequently, this temple was forgotten for a long time, and as a result, it has been well-preserved through more than two thousand years of wind and rain, becoming, along with the Temple of Hephaestus in Athens, one of the two best-preserved ancient temples in Greece.
In 1765, a French architect accidentally discovered the ruins of this temple, and the first formal excavation of the temple took place in 1812. In 1814, the temple's exquisite Corinthian capital and 22 decorative stone carvings were taken away by the British in the name of archaeological research and are now preserved in the British Museum.
Nevertheless, even without the capital and stone carvings, the temple still holds immense cultural value. In 1986, the temple was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site.
Since the main building material of the temple is limestone, which is easily eroded by rainwater, the Greek government draped the temple in a giant canvas coat in the autumn of 1987 to protect this precious heritage. Its angular and undulating shape is designed to prevent the accumulation of rain and snow, maximizing the protection of the temple and its foundation from erosion.
The Greek cultural heritage department assessed that the canvas coat prevents the temple from being directly exposed to rain and snow erosion, reduces the temperature difference between day and night, and significantly alleviates foundation subsidence and natural erosion. Of course, the canvas coat isolates the temple from its surrounding environment, which has a certain impact on the visual effect of the temple. Cultural heritage experts believe that, weighing the pros and cons, the positive effects of the canvas coat far outweigh the negative impacts. Under the protection of the coat, cultural heritage professionals have been carrying out the protection and restoration work of the temple for many years.
As if echoing the hidden temple, on the slope below in front of the temple, column shafts and stones that have not yet been fully identified and restored are covered with plastic sheets. At the same time, some auxiliary facilities set up for the convenience of tourists have also adopted a "stealth" method: trash cans are cleverly sunk into the ground following the contour of the stone embankment; portable toilets are kept far away from the temple and deeply hidden in the bushes.
Of course, these measures are only temporary, and experts are still researching and practicing how to permanently protect this precious site in the future. Greece is a country with a wealth of cultural relics, so the achievements of each protection effort have important reference significance for the protection of cultural relics in other countries.