History of the Temple of Artemis

For more than a thousand years, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus — the Artemision — was one of the most sacred and celebrated buildings on earth. It was rebuilt several times, each grander than the last, and in its final form it earned a permanent place among the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

Origins on a sacred marsh

Worship on the site is far older than the famous temple. Long before the Greeks, a mother- goddess was venerated here, later merged with the Greek Artemis and the Anatolian Cybele. The Ephesian Artemis was not the slender huntress of Athens but a many-breasted figure of fertility and abundance — a goddess of the whole natural world. Early shrines rose and fell on the low, flood-prone ground near the Cayster (Küçük Menderes) river.

The temple of King Croesus

Around 560 BC, the fabulously wealthy King Croesus of Lydia conquered Ephesus and funded a vast new marble temple. Designed by the Cretan architect Chersiphron and his son Metagenes, it was among the first monumental buildings constructed entirely of marble. To cope with the soft, marshy soil — and, it was said, to guard against earthquakes — the builders laid the foundations on a bed of charcoal and fleeces. When complete, it was the largest temple the Greek world had ever seen.

🏛️ Artist's impression of the completed Artemision

The night it burned: Herostratus, 356 BC

On a July night in 356 BC, a man named Herostratus set fire to the temple. His motive was not politics or profit but fame: he wanted his name remembered forever. The Ephesians executed him and forbade anyone to speak his name — a punishment called damnatio memoriae — yet the ancient writers recorded it anyway, and "Herostratic fame" still means notoriety sought for its own sake.

Legend held that Artemis was too busy attending the birth of Alexander the Great, far away in Macedon, to save her own temple from the flames.

Rebuilt grander than before

The Ephesians began an even more magnificent reconstruction. When Alexander the Great arrived decades later he offered to pay for the rebuilding — provided the temple carried his name in dedication. The Ephesians tactfully declined, replying that it was not fitting for one god to build a temple to another. The new temple stood on a platform roughly 130 by 69 metres, ringed by some 127 columns around 18 metres high — more than twice the footprint of the Parthenon in Athens.

One of the Seven Wonders

It was this rebuilt temple that ancient travellers ranked among the Seven Wonders. The poet Antipater of Sidon, who compiled the classic list, had seen the pyramids, the Hanging Gardens and the Colossus of Rhodes — and still judged the Artemision the greatest of all.

"But when I saw the sacred house of Artemis that towers to the clouds, the others were placed in the shade, for the Sun himself has never looked upon its equal outside Olympus."
— Antipater of Sidon

Decline, plunder and ruin

In 262 AD the temple was damaged and looted during a raid by the Goths. It was partly restored, but the rise of Christianity in Ephesus — a city where the Apostle Paul had preached against the cult of Artemis — gradually ended the old worship. The temple fell into disuse, its marble was quarried for other buildings, and the marshy plain slowly buried what remained. In time, even its location was forgotten.

Rediscovery

The site was lost for centuries until 1869, when the British engineer and archaeologist John Turtle Wood, digging on behalf of the British Museum, located the temple's foundations beneath metres of river silt. Later excavations traced the great platform and recovered column fragments and sculpture, some of which are now in the British Museum in London and the Ephesus Archaeological Museum in Selçuk.

What remains today

Today the Artemision is a tranquil archaeological field. Its foundations are marked out in stone, and a single column — reassembled in the twentieth century from scattered original fragments — rises from the water-logged ground, often topped by a stork's nest. It is a humble sight for one of the Seven Wonders, and yet standing there, with Ephesus on one side and the İsa Bey Mosque and Basilica of St John on the other, you look across three thousand years of continuous history.

Timeline at a glance

1. c. 800 BCFirst shrines

   Early shrines to an Anatolian mother-goddess rise on the marshy site.

2. c. 560 BCThe temple of Croesus

   King Croesus of Lydia funds the great marble temple; construction takes decades.

3. 356 BCThe fire

   Herostratus burns the temple down to make his name immortal.

4. 4th–3rd c. BCRebuilt as a Wonder

   Reconstructed grander than before and ranked among the Seven Wonders.

5. 262 ADSacked by the Goths

   The temple is damaged and looted in a Gothic raid, and never fully restored.

6. 5th c. ADAbandoned

   As Christianity spreads the site is left; its marble is quarried for new buildings.

7. 1869Rediscovered

   John Turtle Wood locates the buried foundations for the British Museum.