Abstract
Abstract. Eight of the greatest Ionic temples of the ancient world were built on or near the Aegean coast of Turkey, from the dipteros of Chersiphron in Ephesos to the pseudo-dipteroi of Hermogenes in Teos and Magnesia. The temples were the epitome of elegance and splendour, difficult to surpass in terms of architectural achievement for a period of four centuries from 6th century to 2nd century BC which spans Archaic, Classical and Hellenistic eras. All of these edifices now lie in ruins. As various empires in the region rose and fell, the temples suffered looting and destruction. Nature also played a part with rivers inundating the temenoses and silting up the archaeological remains, and earthquakes toppling columns and reducing the cellas to rubble. Despite this catacylism, tens of hundreds of years after they were built, these marble buildings still tantalise the human imagination. The objective of this paper is to present a systematic and comprehensive treatise of the logical procedure of the 3D visualisation of these monuments of the ancient cities of classical antiquity. The virtual rediscovery and visual recovery can never replace or remedy the loss of the temples. It can, however, visually awaken the imagination and provide a hypothesised experience of the temples as well as restoring a sense of the architecture and the place.
Highlights
The Ionian order of architecture reached its peak with the construction of eight large Ionian temples on the east coast of Aegean
They were the fruits of the Ionian temple-building era
This era was started with the construction of the Artemis Temple in Ephesus in the first half of the 6th century BC and ended with the Temple of Dionysos in Teos at the end of the 2nd century BC (Akurgal, 2011)
Summary
They were the fruits of the Ionian temple-building era. The remaining three were in their immediate hinterland, separated by surmountable distances from the others Together, they displayed elegance and supremacy that was not to be surpassed in any other region of the antique world by architectural achievements. Pioneer temples of the Ionic order were built in the Archaic age, when the Greek Ionians were at the height of their golden era, followed by others in the Classical and Hellenistic periods Of these most important sanctuaries in the Aegean Turkey, only the foundations made of limestone with some fragments of the marble structure remained at their original location. With temples so significant as the eight Ionian monuments presented here, the list of the authors who wrote in this field is necessarily extensive
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