Heraion of Samos: The Birthplace of Hera

The Story of the Heraion of Samos

On the southern coast of Samos, near the mouth of the Imbrasos River, the Samians honored their island's greatest goddess. They believed that Hera, queen of the gods and wife of Zeus, was born here, beneath a lygos tree, a kind of willow that grew by the river. Her sanctuary, known as the Heraion, became one of the most important in the Greek world, and the temple built here was among the largest the Greeks ever attempted.

The goddess was honored with a festival called the Tonaia. According to an ancient story, her wooden statue was once stolen and later found tied up in branches of lygos. Each year, the Samians carried the statue to the shore, washed it, wrapped it in lygos branches and brought it back, reenacting the story. The sacred lygos tree itself was revered at the heart of the sanctuary.

In the 6th century BC, Samos was a rich naval power, and its people wanted a temple worthy of their goddess. In the first half of the century, the architects Rhoikos and Theodoros built a huge Ionic temple surrounded by a double row of columns, a design that seemed like a forest of stone. This temple did not survive long, and under the powerful tyrant Polycrates, work began on an even bigger replacement, about 108 meters long. The historian Herodotus described it as the largest temple he had ever seen.

The new temple was never completely finished. Polycrates was killed around 522 BC, and although work continued for centuries, many columns were left without their final carving. Over time, earthquakes and the removal of stone for new buildings reduced the vast temple to ruins. Today a single column, standing at about half its original height, rises above the foundations, a lonely survivor of one of the great buildings of the ancient world.

The sanctuary was filled with offerings from across the Mediterranean, including objects from Egypt, Cyprus and the Near East, a reminder of the wide connections of Samian sailors and traders. The greatest treasures found here are marble statues. They include a colossal kouros, a statue of a young man nearly 5 meters tall, and a sculpted group of figures dedicated by a man named Geneleos. Both are now displayed in the Archaeological Museum of Samos in Vathy.

In 1992 the Heraion was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List together with the nearby ancient town of Pythagoreion, named after the mathematician Pythagoras, who was born on Samos. The listing also includes the Tunnel of Eupalinos, an underground aqueduct dug through a mountain in the 6th century BC by teams working from both ends, an astonishing feat of ancient engineering.

Today the Heraion lies a short drive west of Pythagoreio, near the village of Ireo, close to the sea. You can walk among the foundations of the temples and altars and stand beneath the last column of Polycrates's temple. Combine your visit with the Tunnel of Eupalinos and the museum in Vathy, where the colossal kouros shows the ambition and wealth of ancient Samos.