Temple of Artemis at Ephesus

December 10th, 2007 by Shenron

The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus was a temple made for the god Artemis which took one hundred and twenty years to complete. Previous temples and sites had inhabited the same grounds with excavations revealing previous structures and settlements; however the most famous is the actual Temple of Artemis at Ephesus which reached its best phase at around the middle of the fifth century BC.

The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus was destroyed by arson two hundred years later on July 21, 356 BC by a man seeking fame named Herostratus - who was then executed and mention of his name stricken under penalty of death. The temple was the restored in 323 BC, and then was destroyed again by the Goths in 262, and it was then rebuilt again - which did not last very long and it too was demolished. Parts of it were later used for some of the columns in the Hagia Sophia.