Delphi

Delphi is an ancient sanctuary of Apollo on the south-western slopes of Mount Parnassus in central Greece, above the valley of the river Pleistos. For more than a thousand years it was home to the Pythia, the most famous oracle of the Greek world, whom cities, kings and private people consulted before wars, the founding of colonies and other weighty decisions. The Greeks regarded it as the centre of the world, marked by a stone called the omphalos, or navel, and the city-states filled its sacred precinct with treasuries, statues and offerings.

People lived on the site in the Neolithic, and occupation became extensive in the Mycenaean period, between about 1600 and 1100 BCE, when nearby Krisa was the leading power in the area. Greek myth explained the sanctuary in several ways. In the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, the god killed a serpent guarding a spring there and brought Cretan sailors to serve as his priests. Other traditions, followed by Aeschylus, held that the shrine had first belonged to the earth goddess Gaia before Apollo took it over. The scholar H. W. Parke treated these stories as explanations invented for the oracle's customs rather than as history. Archaeology shows offerings increasing sharply from the late eighth century BCE, and Delphi became a sanctuary for all Greeks during the seventh century.

The Pythia, a local woman chosen to speak for Apollo, sat on a tripod in the innermost room of the temple and gave answers that priests put into verse. Ancient writers, including Plutarch, who served as a priest at Delphi, linked her trances to vapours rising from the ground. Some modern researchers have proposed gases such as ethylene, or the effects of oleander leaves, but these explanations remain disputed. Maxims such as "know thyself" and "nothing in excess" were said to be carved on the temple.

Control of the sanctuary was fought over in a series of Sacred Wars. The First Sacred War, from 597 to 585 BCE, strengthened the Amphictyonic League, a council of neighbouring peoples that protected the temple and ran the Pythian Games, held every four years from 586 BCE and unusual for including contests in music. The temple burned in 548 BCE and was rebuilt with help from the exiled Athenian family of the Alcmaeonids. In 356 BCE the Phocians seized and plundered Delphi, and the war that followed ended in 346 BCE with the rise of Macedon under Philip II. The ruins of the temple seen today belong to a rebuilding of the fourth century BCE.

A Gallic army under Brennus attacked the sanctuary around 279 BCE; sources differ on whether it was driven off or managed to burn and plunder the temple, which an earthquake also damaged in that period. Delphi came under Roman control in 191 BCE. Sulla sacked it in 86 BCE during the Mithridatic Wars, and Nero plundered it again in 66 CE. The oracle revived in the second century CE under Hadrian, who is believed to have visited twice. Constantine later removed treasures to decorate Constantinople, among them the bronze Serpent Column of 479 BCE, which still stands in Istanbul. The Pythian Games continued until at least 424, but under Theodosius I in the late fourth century the oracle was closed as part of the suppression of pagan cults. Delphi then became a Christian town with a bishop and a basilica, shrank in the sixth century, and was abandoned in the sixth or seventh.

The Ottomans completed their conquest of the region around 1410, and a village named Kastri grew up on the ruins, its people reusing the ancient stone. Cyriacus of Ancona described the remains in 1436, and later visitors included Lord Byron in 1809. The French School at Athens began excavating in 1880, and after an earthquake damaged Kastri the villagers were moved to a new site. The Great Excavation from 1893 uncovered the sanctuary of Apollo, the temple of Athena Pronaia and thousands of inscriptions and sculptures. The site has formed part of Parnassos National Park since 1938 and is listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.