At Didyma, the temple of Apollo still visible at the site is a work of the 4th to the 2nd century BC. It ranks among the greatest masterpieces of Greek architecture, both for its size and for the quality of its decoration. This building, which replaced an older sanctuary destroyed by the Persians in 493 BC, is of the decastyle type – that is, it has ten columns on the façade. It was erected on a platform with seven steps, and a stairway with fourteen steps in front of the main entrance of the sanctuary allows access to the pronaos. At the foot of this stairway, a circular structure can be seen: it is a sacrificial altar, partly destroyed today.
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