The temple of Athena Lindia (Lindos)

 archaeological site, historic ruins

Core of the sanctuary of Athena Lindia was the temple to the goddess, built on the highest point of the rock of the acropolis.
Worship of Athena possibly replaced an earlier cult of an unknown deity, in the cave opening directly under the temple. The cave continued to be a place of worship in later times, as the chapel of the Virgin Spiliotissa.
The architectural remains belong to a temple built in the late 4th c. BC, after the destruction of the earlier temple by fire, in 392 BC. The temple is in the Doric order, amphiprostyle and of approximate dimensions 22 x 8 m. It comprises a pronaos, a celIa and an opisthodomos. Preserved in situ are the crepis in the opisthodomos, a large part of the west wall and a small part of the east one.
In the cella there was a low parapet, behind which stood the table for offerings and the statue of the goddess. Visible in the walls are grooves to receive wooden supports and nail holes for holding the revetments that covered the temple interior.
On either side of the doorway was probably placed the List of Priests, a very important inscription in which the names of the priests from 406 BC until AD 28 are written. Parts of it were used to pave the floor of an Early Christian basilica on the site of the Tetrastoon, in the settlement.
The temple was constructed of local sandstone (poros), which was coated with stucco, as were the other buildings on the acropolis.
In the period 1936–1940, the two colonnades of the prostaseis were restored and parts of the side walls of the temple were completed. During the recent interventions (2000–2005), all the earlier completions were removed and replaced with new building material. Concurrently, errors in the previous intervention were corrected, the column height was recalcuIated and certain ancient stone blocks were repositioned. Fragments of the ancient threshold were identified, completed with new material and set back in their original place.