Audiotour Temple C

Which is the temple that is overlooking the Acropolis of Selinunte? The temple C!

Even this temple, which is partly rebuilt, like the others that we saw on the eastern hill, had the main façade looking at the East and was completely surrounded by columns. Six columns decorated the short sides and seventeen the long ones!

Here too, as we told you about the temple G, the columns had some differences: in the temple G only some were ribbed, while others were smooth, but they are all formed by blocks called “rocchi” stacked on top of each other. In the temple F, instead, some columns were monolithic, that were formed by one piece as tall as the columns, while the others are made up of six blocks of different heights.

The temple included the entry room, called the “pronao”, from which there is an access to the cell, the heart of the building, which was raised by two steps in regard of the pronao, and behind the “adyton”, that is a space, closed to the devout and accessible only to priests, employed as a treasury.

The trabeation rested on columns, composed by a straight element, the architrave, over whom rested the frieze, composed by triglyphs and metopes: slabs decorated by vertical elements engraved alternating and slabs with relief scenes.

From this temple came some of the most famous metope of the Greek world! The Quadriga of Apollo, Perseus and the Gorgon and Eracle and the Cercopi.

Everything was then topped by the tympanum, the triangular space composed by the layer of the roof that here, on the main façade was decorated with a terrifying Gorgon mask in terracotta. Let’s discover together these artworks of the ancient sculpture.

This text has been translated by Marta Napoli with the collaboration of Angela Gisone. The narrator is Leonardo Villaverde: class V B from the Primary School "Lombardo Radice".