Das Heiligtum Von Gyroulas Bei Sangri Auf Naxos

In 1951, Nikolaos Kontoleon located the remains of an important ancient sanctuary at the site of Gyroula, less than one and a half kilometers south of the village of Sangri, and in 1954 he revealed an all-marble ancient temple, which had later been converted into a Christian basilica. In 1976, his successor in the direction of the excavations of Naxos, Professor Vassilis Lambrinoudakis, organized for the further research and study of the findings in Gyroula an interdisciplinary team of...
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In 1951, Nikolaos Kontoleon located the remains of an important ancient sanctuary at the site of Gyroula, less than one and a half kilometers south of the village of Sangri, and in 1954 he revealed an all-marble ancient temple, which had later been converted into a Christian basilica. In 1976, his successor in the direction of the excavations of Naxos, Professor Vassilis Lambrinoudakis, organized for the further research and study of the findings in Gyroula an interdisciplinary team of archaeologists and architects, with the participation of scientists from the Technical University of Munich, headed by Professor Gottfried Gruben, the well-known "Mr. Theophilos" to many Naxians. This group worked continuously and systematically until 2000. After exhaustive research and collection of the scattered members of the ancient building in the wider area and documentation of all the material, the team proceeded to the restoration of the ancient temple, the readable by the general public shaping of all the remains of the sanctuary where the temple was located and the construction of a local museum, in which architectural elements and sculptural offerings from the sanctuary were housed in a particularly supervisory way. The many years of study proved that the temple at Gyroula is an extremely important building for the knowledge of ancient architecture in terms of style and architectural type, the construction of the roof, the principle of visual corrections and the management of the interior space in ancient buildings. At the same time, the discovery of a rare in antiquity gathering of the Demi-mother with Apollo in the sanctuary offered a particularly interesting case in the knowledge of the religion of the ancient Greeks. All this new knowledge, made public with preliminary announcements, has already placed Gyroula and Naxos in a particularly high position in the relevant international bibliography. The restoration and promotion of the sanctuary is so successful and interesting for the general public that the archaeological site of Gyroula in Sagri is today, after Portara, by far the most visited archaeological site of Naxos. All this concentrated knowledge, particularly important for science but also for the history of Naxos and its important contribution to classical culture, is now attributed in detail to the scientific world and to the wider international public by the contributors of the work of research and promotion of the ancient sanctuary of Demeter in Gyroula Sagri, in an elegant volume of the basilica and their parts by the hand of professors Manolis Korres and Gottfried Gruben.