The statue was built around 457 BC in the ancient Greek city of Olympia. This was the location of the first Olympic games, every four years games were held at Olympia to celebrate and pay tribute to Zeus, the spectators would come not only to watch the games but also to admire the statue.
The statue was commissioned because many believed that a regular Doric-style temple was not good enough for Zeus. The Athenian sculptor Phidias created the seated Zeus from ivory and draped him in a gold robe. Zeus had a wreath around his head and held a smaller statue of Nike, his messenger in the right hand, a sceptre being in his left.
The statue was eventually moved to a palace in Constantinople, which was lucky to begin with as fire gutted the Olympia temple soon after but the luck ran out when fire destroyed that palace, along with the great Statue of Zeus in 462 AD.
The Temple of Artemis (Diana) at Ephesus
The Temple of Artemis was built around 550 BC in the Greek City of Ephesus, which was on the west coast of modern-day Turkey. Artemis, sometimes called Diana was the Greek goddess of the hunt but the Ephesus Goddess of fertility.
The first shrine to Artemis was built around 800 BC but it was destroyed and rebuilt several times. By 600 BC, Ephesus was a major port or trade and an architect named Chersiphron, with the help of his son designed a new temple. This temple was destroyed by King Croesus of Lydia as he invaded and conquered Ephesus.
Croesus, however, funded the construction of a new temple designed by Theodorus. The new temple dwarfed previous versions at 300 feet in length by 150 feet wide. It has over 100 stone columns supporting its roof. This temple was destroyed on purpose by a young man named Herostratus who was trying to get his name to go down in history, he burned the magnificent temple to the ground.
A new temple, the largest and final temple of Artemis at Ephesus was commissioned shortly after, designed by Scorpas of Paros. Piny the Elder, a Roman historian claimed that the temple was a "wonderful monument of Grecian magnificence, and one that merits our genuine admiration."
The temple was made entirely from marble, a first in ancient times. Piny recorded the size of this new temple to be 425 feet in length by 225 feet wide. It had nearly 130, 60-foot columns supporting an even larger roof. This temple was around twice the size of the Parthenon of Athens, which lays in ruins today.
During the construction of this temple, there was a major problem. One of the major roof beams that had been installed above the door refused to lie flat. The architect was desperately worried about this situation unit he had a dream about the Goddess Artemis who told him she had moved the stone and sorted the problem herself. The following morning he found that his dream had come true and construction was completed successfully.
This temple was destroyed during a Gothic raid in 262 AD and never restored by the later Roman occupants of the city. 19th century archaeological expeditions to the area in search of the temple lead by John Turtle Wood and later D G Hograth returned fragments of the fine sculptures of the final temple, these can now be found in The British Museum, London.
The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus
In 277 BC the rule of Halicarnassus and its kingdom was passed down to Mausolus, who extended the kingdom further, building on what his late father had already achieved. The area was in modern-day southwestern Turkey.
Mausolus's reign lasted for 24 years and during that time; he introduced and encouraged many Greek practices and designs to his kingdom including the Greek style of government, democracy.
Mausolus died in 353 BC leaving his queen, Artemisia, who was also his sister, as it was the custom in Caria for a ruler to marry their own sister. Artemisia was inconsolable and to celebrate he dead husband she had a giant Greek style tomb built, which was designed by Greek architects Satyrus and Pythius and stood approximately 135 feet tall. The tomb became so famous that the word mausoleum is now a general word for a stately tomb.
Shortly after the tomb was finished, Artemisia found herself in trouble. The people of Rhodes, an island in the Aegean Sea, next to Greece, rebelled on hearing of the king's death. They mounted a full naval assault on the city of Halicarnassus but Artemisia had a cunning plan. She hid her own fleet at the east end of the cities harbour and allowed the Rhodians to make landfall and disembark. She then sailed her ships in and towed the empty Rhodian ships out to sea before putting her own soldiers on them. Artemisia then instructed her soldiers to go and attack Rhodes, fooling the Rhodians into thinking it was their own navy returning home so the they put up no defense and Rhodes was easily captured, quelling the rebellion.
The Mausoleum survived the conquering of Halicarnassus by Alexander the Great in 334 BC and attacked by pirated in 62 and 58 BC. It went on to stand above the city, and then it's ruins for 17 centuries before being destroyed by a series of earthquakes and by 1404 only the very base of the Mausoleum was still standing.
