Image Details

Sonia Halliday Photographs

Five elegant columns of the Temple of Athena at Priene, in modern Turkey, have remained standing since the temple’s dedication by Alexander the Great in 334 B.C. In ancient times, this part of the Aegean coast of Anatolia was called Ionia; and the architecture developed there mainly from the fourth to second century B.C. is called Ionic architecture—which was praised by the first-century B.C. Roman architect Vitruvius for its perfect proportions. Vitruvius based his ten-volume De Architectura on earlier treatises (no longer extant) written by Greek architects—including Pytheos, who built the Priene temple. (Pytheos, however, is better known as the architect of the 353 B.C. Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, modern Bodrum, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.)