Heraion of Perachora - visiting another old friend

This was another site that we visited on our first trip when the weather did not cooperate, so we had occasion to return to potentially get better photographs.  

The Sanctuary of Hera Akraia-Limenia is located on the water, which is unusual for any temple which is not dedicated to healing.  Normally, temples and sanctuaries are high in the mountains in order to prove worthiness by making the trek to invoke the intervention of the god/dess.  Well, here, one had to scramble down to the shore, which was long and precipitous, sort of the inverse of climbing a hill/mountain.

When we visited in 2012, there as lot of unfinished construction on infrastructure--road/sidewalk had been laid out with wood and some gravel base, but had not bee filled.  There was a big sign about EU funding of the project, but work had just seemed to stop.  We were undeterred and ambled through the construction site to the ruins, alone.

Now, in 2023, it is so popular, there are tour buses, and while we were there, two party boats came into the harbour, filled with drunken 20-somethings (one American, one German), and everyone jumped into the water shouting and screaming in ecstasy.  They were so drunk and egging each other on, that the swam ashore, climbed to the top of a small cliff and started jumping into the water there.  It took just about half an hour for them to get this out of their system and move on.  The tour group left even faster.  All Randall and I had to do was wait, an eventually, the silence returned along with the reverence of the site.

The bottom half of the site.  Note the dock!

The Temple of Hera.

A corner stoa and colonnade because this is what would fit into the area.

 

Upper excavation site.  There were several buildings here, but as usual, they were hard to parse since they were just a couple of walls.  However, the elliptical cistern was particularly unusual, as was the French drain surrounding it!  Obviously, they are still working on the reconstruction, and didn't want the water to get it, but then isn't that the point of the cistern and aren't you working against nature???

Stairs!  these are original, and they don't normally want visitors to use them--they are steep and slippery from wear.  Also, an intersection of drainage channels.  The engineering is impressive.

View from the harbor and the rock where the idiots jumped into the water.  (Un)fortunately, no one won a Darwin award today.

Map of the site and legend which I only discovered as I was leaving, taped to a wall of a small chapel which is also on the site (because you can't have a temple to a Greek god without also having a representative of Christ nearby).  The English translation of the legend was a beautiful afterthought.

The new infrastructure now seems to obstruct some of the original natural integration of the site with the landscape, leaving my memories of how it was bittersweet, but on the flip side, they have done some more excavation to reveal other buildings in the area with the promise of move.  At some point, will will revisit this site.  It remains one of my favorites.  

NB.  There were two cats which I met on my first trip.  This trip, I met a beautiful black cat who stole my heart.