How the Ancient Greeks Built Their Magnificent Temples: The Art of Ancient Engineering

Doric, Ion­ic, Corinthi­an: these, as prac­ti­cal­ly every­one who went through school in the West some­how remem­bers, are the three vari­eties of clas­si­cal col­umn. We may still recall them, more specif­i­cal­ly, as rep­re­sent­ing the three ancient Greek archi­tec­tur­al styles. But as ancient-his­to­ry YouTu­ber Gar­rett Ryan points out in the new Told in Stone video above, only Doric and Ion­ic columns belong ful­ly to ancient Greece; what we think of when we think of Corinthi­an columns were devel­oped more in the civ­i­liza­tion of ancient Rome. The con­text is an expla­na­tion of how the ancient Greeks built their tem­ples, one of the char­ac­ter­is­tics of their design process being the use of columns aplen­ty.

It’s one thing to hear about Greek columns in the class­room, and quite anoth­er to walk amid them in per­son. That, per­haps, is why Ryan deliv­ers the open­ing of his video perched upon the ruins of what’s known as Tem­ple C. Hav­ing once stood proud­ly in Seli­nus, a city belong­ing to Magna Grae­cia (Greek-speak­ing areas of Italy), it now con­sti­tutes one of the prime tourist attrac­tions for antiq­ui­ty-mind­ed vis­i­tors to mod­ern-day Sici­ly.

Though his chan­nel may be called Told in Stone, Ryan begins his brief his­to­ry of the Greek tem­ple before that hardy mate­r­i­al had even come into use for these pur­pos­es. At first, the Greeks fash­ioned the homes of their gods out of mud brick, with thatched roofs and wood­en porch­es; only from the sev­enth cen­tu­ry BC, “prob­a­bly inspired by con­tact with Egypt,” did they start build­ing them to last.

Or they built them to last as long as could be expect­ed, in any case, giv­en the nature of the mate­ri­als avail­able in the ancient world and the mil­len­nia that have passed since then. Take the Tem­ple of Apol­lo at the Sanc­tu­ary of Didy­ma in mod­ern-day Turkey, which his­to­ry-and-archi­tec­ture YouTu­ber Manuel Bra­vo pays a vis­it in the video just above. It may not look as if the near­ly 2400 years since its nev­er-tech­ni­cal­ly-com­plet­ed con­struc­tion began have been kind, but it’s nev­er­the­less one of the bet­ter-pre­served tem­ples from ancient Greek civ­i­liza­tion in exis­tence (not to men­tion the largest). Even in its ruined state, it gives what Bra­vo describes as the impres­sion of — or at least, in its hey­day, hav­ing been — “a for­est of huge columns,” a built ver­sion of “the sacred forests that Greeks used to con­se­crate to the gods.” They’re Ion­ic columns, in case you were won­der­ing, but don’t sweat it; there won’t be a quiz.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The City of Nashville Built a Full-Scale Repli­ca of the Parthenon in 1897, and It’s Still Stand­ing Today

A 3D Mod­el Reveals What the Parthenon and Its Inte­ri­or Looked Like 2,500 Years Ago

How the Parthenon Mar­bles End­ed Up In The British Muse­um

Explore Ancient Athens 3D, a Dig­i­tal Recon­struc­tion of the Greek City-State at the Height of Its Influ­ence

What Ancient Greece Real­ly Looked Like: See Recon­struc­tions of the Tem­ple of Hadri­an, Curetes Street & the Foun­tain of Tra­jan

The His­to­ry of Ancient Greece in 18 Min­utes: A Brisk Primer Nar­rat­ed by Bri­an Cox

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.