Cape Sounion

The most beautiful hour of the Attic day, spent on a cliff seventy metres above the Aegean, inside a temple built for the god of the sea. We time the drive so you arrive with the light still gold and leave when it has gone violet.

Tour highlights

• The Temple of Poseidon (444–440 BC)
• Fifteen of the original thirty-four Doric columns
• Lord Byron’s carved signature
• The Athenian Riviera coastal road
• Sunset over the Aegean and the Cyclades
• Vouliagmeni, Varkiza and Lavrio bays en route
• Optional stop at Lake Vouliagmeni
• Photography from the cliff platform

About this journey

The temple was raised between 444 and 440 BC, in the same Periclean building programme that produced the Parthenon, on a headland that had been sacred long before. It was a Doric peripteral temple with six columns on the short sides and thirteen on the long — thirty-four in all, of which fifteen still stand. The marble is local, from nearby Agrileza, and unusually white and fine-grained, which is why the columns still glow at dusk.

For every ship coming up from the Cyclades, Sounion was the first sign of Attica — a temple on the horizon meaning home, or the end of the crossing. It is also where myth puts King Aegeus, watching for his son Theseus’ white sail, seeing black, and throwing himself into the sea that has carried his name ever since.

In 1810 Lord Byron cut his name into the marble of one of the columns; it is still there, on the left-hand pillar of the north side, and it started a fashion for graffiti so enthusiastic that the temple is now roped off. You walk the perimeter — which is where the photographs are anyway.

The drive itself is half the pleasure: the coastal road runs south through Glyfada, Vouliagmeni and Varkiza, with the sea on your right the whole way. Tell your driver if you would like to stop for a swim, a coffee or a fish taverna on the way back.

Good to know