The Sanctuary of Yria at Livadi was located (1982), researched (1986-1996) and developed for the public (1992-1996) by the University of Athens, in collaboration with the Technical University of Munich and with funding from these two institutions, the Ministry of Culture (research) and the Ministry of the Aegean (development). This is a site with an uninterrupted life-span and operation from the 14th century BC to the present day.
Perhaps the most important sanctuary of Naxos, it was, like the entire island, dedicated to Dionysus. The temenos (sacred area) is located at the mouth of the river in the fertile plain created by embankments south of the city of Naxos, to which it was apparently connected by a ‘sacred road’.
Its location and history are reminiscent to that of the Heraion of Samos. On the riverbank there was a simple Mycenaean sanctuary. The following Geometric layers confirm the continuation of human presence in the area, which is also attested to by the first (I) temple, lying about 15 metres south of the river. It is a simple oikos (5×10 m) with a flat brick roof and three posts. An offering table was located above the spot the Mycenaeans had used for the same purpose. On the riverbank a wall was found that bore traces of burnt bones, something that argues for ritual meals. This temple was probably destroyed by a flood.
After the mid-8th century, with the expansion of the city of Naxos, the second temple (temple II) was erected, attaining dimensions of 10×16 m. Three rows of five wooden columns on marble bases divided the space into four aisles. At the back of the building there was a square eschara to receive sacrifices. Benches for about 60 of the faithful surrounded the space. The floor was covered with burnt bones. An external platform offered room for the remaining guests at ‘events’.
Temple III, from the early 7th century, was enlarged to have a four-columned porch at the front. At the same time, its internal configuration was changed: two colonnades were now opened in the centre of the space, between four columns of which was the eschara, perhaps set under a skylight in the roof. The wooden columns stood on marble bases and probably had shaped capitals. Marble gutters removed water from the flat roof. A clay frieze of slabs and with borders, approximately 16 cm high, probably crowned the porch’s entablature.
In the first quarter of the 6th century BC, a significant shift in monumentality was noted. Temple IV began to be built around 580 BC and in its holy-of-holies would have had a statue of above life-size. It has even been argued that the monumental statue of the god Dionysus (which is now customarily called the ‘Kouros of Apollonas’) was intended for this purpose. (This today can be visited where it was left in antiquity, in the quarries of Apollonas.) Columns, doors, entablature, roof tiles were all of marble, if in keeping with its prototype of the House of Naxians on Delos. The roof is now saddle-shaped and has gable pediments. On a marble altar placed 12 m in front of the facade of the temple, the outdoor sacrifices would be made, while libations would be made into the marble cistern in the cella.
During the Roman period, from the 1st century BC to the 3rd century AD, due to the instability of the subsoil, extensive repairs were carried out. The marble temple was renovated in 40 BC when Mark Antony ruled that he be worshipped as Dionysus in all the temples of Dionysus in his territory. His statue, today in the Naxos Museum, was found in the cella. The punishment of Dirce is carved in relief on the chest, and he holds a maenad in his left hand. After Octavian’s victory over Mark Antony at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC, the head and the names on the inscription at the base of the statue were changed.
Probably in the 5th or 6th centuries AD the temple was converted into a three-aisled Christian basilica. After frequent floods, the last major one in the 12th century, the basilica was abandoned and the current church of Agios Georgios was built in a safe place nearby, in which process parts of the ancient temple were used.
Naxos had a pioneering role in the development not only of sculpture but also of architecture. With the second temple of Yria, and from as early as the 8th century, is documented the first known configuration of a monumental interior space as a four-aisled hypostyle temple hall – an amazing achievement for the time. The third temple directly documents the existence of a prostyle façade of wooden columns in an ancient temple, and the fourth temple, from 580-550 BC, provides the earliest example of a stone prostyle for an Ionic temple. In the last temple, the first steps of monumental Greek marble architecture – to then without witness – are identified in great detail in the foundations of the prostasis/porch and the sanctuary, in the form of the columns, in the imposing doorways, in the formation of the entablature and the marble roof. In other words, the very forms that triumphed in ancient architecture and that still permeate world culture today as an expression of the monumental. The history of the ritual hearth in a sanctuary, the development of the sanctuaries and the creation of special buildings that served them can also be observed at Yria: all these aspects may be seen in the successive constructions (early Archaic, Classical and late Roman) of an apsidal building dedicated to preparing and serving ceremonial food — showing that this practice dates back much earlier than was previously known.
