FOUNTAIN, GYMNASIUM AND SANCTUARY OF ATHENA

Leaving the museum, you first come to the Castalie fountain. It is no longer open to the public because of frequent landslides. It is a pity, because the water of this sacred spring was particularly important in the cult of Apollo and for the functioning of the oracle... It is here that the subjects who came to consult the oracle of Delphi were purified.

Crossing the road and going down the steps that cross a café, we arrive at the entrance of the gymnasium of Delphi. It was in this gymnasium and its facilities that the young Delphians and the athletes participating in the Pythian games practiced. From the Hellenistic period, the gymnasium became a place of culture where poets, scholars, philosophers and astrologers came to give lectures in the halls or under the porticoes. The building had two floors. There remain some ruins of it, it included two tracks of race of which one was protected from the bad weather by a portico with Doric columns. It measured approximately 184 m length and made it possible to the runners to train under all circumstances. The other track, in the open air, had a very particular location: according to the legend, the place would have been previously covered by a thick forest, where Ulysses was wounded in the knee by a boar. And it is with the scar of this wound that Odysseus had been recognized by his servant when he returned to Ithaca twenty years after the Trojan war. The lower terrace included a palestra or large square courtyard, a round pool for cold baths, the layout of which is still visible, as well as baths for hot baths added in Roman times. A large common room allowed the athletes to rest and concentrate before the events.

Continuing the descent, we reach the sanctuary of Athena Pronaia. The goddess Athena was nicknamed Pronaia (the one in front of the temple) because those who were on their way to Delphi from the east would first encounter her shrine. We will visit it from the western entrance, the other one being condemned because of landslides.

We will see first, on the left, the rests of a temple in limestone. It is the ruins of the second temple of Athena built around 370 B.C. It was of Doric style, with 6 columns in front, and answered rigorous canons, as well at the level of its proportions as at that of the work of the stone. This second temple was built following an earthquake which had seriously damaged the first temple dedicated to Athena. This first temple is none other than... the tholos, that we meet a little further. Dating from 380 B.C., it is an impressive monument and it must surely have been one of the most beautiful and interesting buildings of antiquity, surrounded by a peristyle of twenty Doric columns supporting the structure.

One could admire from the outside the metopes which decorated the top of the circular wall of the cella and especially the mixture of the colors between the white marble and the black blue limestone. This masterpiece of Greek architecture was damaged by the same earthquake that damaged the temple of Alcméonides, and it was decided to rebuild it a little further.

Continuing on, we will observe the remains of two treasures and we will finish the visit by going to the terrace of the altars, just behind and near the eastern entrance of the sanctuary; inscriptions are still visible there.